r/surrealism

Prairie Whales

Size: 16" x 10"

Medium: Acrylic

Support: Canvas

When I stand at the edge of a field out in the belly of the Canadian prairies i can't help but think of the ocean.  The way the grass waves in the wind. The distant whine of working farm equipment.  The dappled sunlight coming through scattered clouds. 

I love this painting because it feels like a dream, but also because it's the first I've painted my backyard.  Well, the field behind my backyard, and there's no whales out there. 

Probably.

(Does NOT mock Christianity or religion, but certain unwanted byproducts of it)

This work operates on two simultaneous readings, neither canceling the other.

The first is a critique of performative faith — the modern reduction of religion to self-validation, aesthetic identity, and social currency. The flagellants of medieval Christianity beat themselves bloody as an act of genuine devotion, accepting physical suffering as the price of spiritual purification. The figure here substitutes that pain for pleasure, that sacrifice for spectacle. She doesn't kneel before God. She kneels before a camera. The capirote (the hat) — historically a symbol of penitence and shame — is rendered in metal and thorns, beautiful and unwearable, religion as ornament rather than burden. The cross is present but repurposed. Devotion has become content.

The second reading implicates the pornography industry's compulsive consumption of innocence and purity. When every other frontier has been exhausted, the sacred becomes the final territory to colonize. The figure is not desecrating religion — she is being consumed by an industry that has already desecrated everything else, now reaching toward the divine as the last remaining symbol of the untouched. Her purity is not hers. It is a product.

It also highlights the fragility of the symbolism we idolize. For most the cross is a symbol for Christ's sacrifice, for the elites it's a tool for media manipulation and for a very very small few it can even be a lewd toy.

What unites both readings is the camera. She is watched, or watching herself being watched. The act of documentation transforms devotion into performance and performance into commodity. The only difference between the two interpretations is who is holding the camera — her, or someone else.

A surreal artwork showing impossibly balanced stones by the ocean, topped with a lone tree and small pavilion. The dreamlike composition creates a peaceful atmosphere while challenging the viewer’s sense of reality and balance.

Made in Blender

Hello !
This is already the 10th card I'm showing from the oracle card deck I'm currently creating, called The Non-places. The illustration was done in Blender, Zbrush and photoshop. Hope you like it :)

Origami Horse

Size: 4' (cm) x 5' (cm)

Medium: Oil and acrylic

Support: Canvas

After some years of living in Alberta, and finding that my art doesn't have a large audience there, I began pondering how i could make my art more accessible to a prairie based viewer. Having already competed three pieces for my origami series i thought of this as an opportunity to bring a sense of action to these works. 

Wild horses are a symbol of the west that is slowly being replaced by dreams of loud engines, and absurdly lifted trucks. In a world where their necessary habitat is being destroyed they could one day be a forgotten feature of the foothills.