Autistic Shutdown (Living With Monsters) -- painting 224 - SXA 2025
[$300 CAD (including shipping): To buy, go to About.]
These paintings were created by a kind of spontaneous improvisation, automatism, and stream of consciousness that often generates unexpected insights and symbolism. The tension in these figurative images may produce a kind of cinematic narrative.
These paintings by an untrained painter -- a former filmmaker, animator, and screenwriter -- could be called intuitive art, visionary art, or art singulier, but more accurately these paintings are true Surrealist works:
"While art movements have tended historically to be about the beauty or quality of the object produced, Surrealism produces art as a means rather than an end. It differs from standard avant-gardes in its refusal of originality and newness for their own sake. The [standard] avant-garde pushes the boundaries of aesthetics toward ever renewed expressive forms; Surrealism tends instead to use forms, new or traditional, as tools with which to express a particular spirit. This spirit is above all one of dissidence and defiance, subtended by a belief in the inexhaustible capacity for wonder that resides in each of us, here and now." -- Mark Polizzotti, "Why Surrealism Matters", 2024, Yale University Press.
The medium is tempera paint without egg, similar to gouache, and commonly called poster paint.
Paper size is 19.5 x 27.5 inches (smooth card 120lb).
NOTE - If you use an image, please attribute it to me. Thanks! (Besides, it's the law for Creative Commons licenses.) And I'd be very grateful if you let me know, too.
Copyright (c) 2025 SXA -- Stephen X. Arthur, Vancouver Canada -- sxarthur@shaw.ca
Autistic Shutdown (Living With Monsters) -- painting 224 - SXA 2025
[$300 CAD (including shipping): To buy, go to About.]
These paintings were created by a kind of spontaneous improvisation, automatism, and stream of consciousness that often generates unexpected insights and symbolism. The tension in these figurative images may produce a kind of cinematic narrative.
These paintings by an untrained painter -- a former filmmaker, animator, and screenwriter -- could be called intuitive art, visionary art, or art singulier, but more accurately these paintings are true Surrealist works:
"While art movements have tended historically to be about the beauty or quality of the object produced, Surrealism produces art as a means rather than an end. It differs from standard avant-gardes in its refusal of originality and newness for their own sake. The [standard] avant-garde pushes the boundaries of aesthetics toward ever renewed expressive forms; Surrealism tends instead to use forms, new or traditional, as tools with which to express a particular spirit. This spirit is above all one of dissidence and defiance, subtended by a belief in the inexhaustible capacity for wonder that resides in each of us, here and now." -- Mark Polizzotti, "Why Surrealism Matters", 2024, Yale University Press.
The medium is tempera paint without egg, similar to gouache, and commonly called poster paint.
Paper size is 19.5 x 27.5 inches (smooth card 120lb).
NOTE - If you use an image, please attribute it to me. Thanks! (Besides, it's the law for Creative Commons licenses.) And I'd be very grateful if you let me know, too.
Copyright (c) 2025 SXA -- Stephen X. Arthur, Vancouver Canada -- sxarthur@shaw.ca