Baby I’m Surreal! - New Art For You (NAFY)

Baby I’m Surreal! ©

Whether I’m sitting on my chips,

or I’m standing on my books.

I yearn for you, I reach for you,

but you’re just beyond my fingertips!

– Baby I’m surr-e-e-e-e-a-a-a-l.

And I genuinely enjoy your admiring looks.

Whether I’m sitting on my chips,

or I’m standing on my books.

Am I your queen, or your king?

Or trapped in a bottle with grim outlooks!

– Baby I’m surr-e-e-e-e-a-a-a-l.

With images and emotions that transcend your manuscripts!

Whether I’m sitting on my chips,

or I’m standing on my books

I yearn for you, I reach for you,

but you’re just beyond my fingertips!

While abstract paintings bring our intangible dream images into our reality, surreal paintings help transform those dreams into more tangible stories! ! Imagine a bright yellow bracelet connected to red, white, and blue hoops; or a pack of hungry wolves at your table; or a bad blackjack hand against the dealer’s King of Hearts showcard (and you just placed an exceptionally large table bet); or a golden ring hovering above a table of colorful hoops; or a falling drop of water against a color-rich background! How ever you imagine those scenes, surreal paintings provide context, emotions, texture, and nuance to the story being told visually.

While surreal paintings have historically been characterized as bizarre or unnatural, typically in a way that is unsettling or even repulsive, that does not have to be the case. Surreal paintings can also expose a rich array of endogenous sensory, motor, emotional, and other experiences through phantasmagorical elements. For example, in the surreal panting Addictions ©, the man in the bottle also exposes how we are all trapped within our physical bodies with no way to escape the temptations, pitfalls, and consequences of life. Likewise, the children playing in that painting represent a celebration of their innocence and our hopes and dreams for their future.

Accordingly, the surreal painting Endo (short for the genetic disease Endometriosis) provides a bizarre visual representation of the emotional trauma and physical pain suffered by women when they learn of this diagnosis. While I am not a woman, I have witnessed the emotional and psychological effects this diagnosis has had on members of my family and close friends. These emotional and psychological effects are represented by the spectrum of colors that span the painting. The fantastic meaning behind the other imagery, colors, and objects presented in the painting are hereby left for the viewer to discern.

Endo, AKA "It's Complicated" Abstract Art Product Image — Endo, AKA “It’s Complicated”

The (work-in-progress) painting Fifty Circles presents another fantasy side of surrealism. Fifty Circles expands the visual stories introduced in its predecessor (and companion) surrealist painting Forty Circles. While Forty Circles contains one-third fewer number of rectangular objects than its companion painting, many of the circular objects that both paintings have in common are repositioned in Forty Circles and overlap with these rectangular objects (more about this painting once it is completed.)