Descent into the quantum world

Title: Descent into the quantum, 2024.

In this surrealist painting I have pursued classical techniques and experimented with a particular varnish as part of a glaze medium.
The image started as a surrealist drawing, and manifests content from the repository of my unconscious, expressing my interests, belief's, desires and personality, through both abstract and figurative forms. It is a conceptual painting born of intuition, the painting could be said to be an interface between conscious and unconscious experiences. What is interesting is how conscious experiences can be interpreted by the imagination, by the freedom of thought and desire.

One important influence that inspired the original drawing, was the film 'The Incredible Shrinking Man'. Other significant influences include my philosophical and scientific knowledge and experiences. This led me to what I describe as a kind of illustration of the quantum world, but it represents a world where illustration and colour would be impossible for human beings! And interestingly, indeterminism of quantum physics, can perhaps be signified by the indeterminism of the freedom of thought, in the creative acts of the imagination.

The central figure in the composition, I referenced from a print by the 19c French Illustrator Emile Bourgaud (1877) of a person dancing the 'Tarantella' which was supposed to cure the bite of a Tarantula! The modern version of the Tarantella could be seen as analogous to the behaviours that were permitted during the Covid Lockdown.