Anima

The series entitled “Anima” in its completion is meant to be a book, but at this point it is a collection of scans, sketches and thumbnails. I started working on it my freshman year of college, and I believe it to mark a certain turning point in my art, specifically my realization of the themes and the metalogic of dreams that have always preoccupied me and informed the process by which I construct an image. “Anima” from an obsession has come to be a sanctuary in a certain sense, where I am free to explore as deep as I want having come to realize that the laws that govern this explorative creation are consistent, intuitive, and mine.
The cover page for the series started out as a high school senior project for which I spent a class sketching in the band room and later produced some finished pieces using the sketches as reference. While some of the pieces actually incorporated the things I observed visually, this image came from a different sort of observation. It was at first a mere allegory for music, but later on became apparent as an image that is as connected to me as dream that lets you know everything you deny while awake. I believe it to be appropriate for the cover page of “Anima” because it is an introduction into the process of image formulation the series have come to be structured on. It may be mistaken for self-consious symbolism but mataphor is the air of this world I reveal not its translation. It has very little to do with what I have learned of Tarot, or Jung, or Lacan or the subconsious, for it has everything to do with what I do NOT know.
This is my folklore.

From a collection of invasively intense mystery obsessions such as these:



the content of Anima is going to evolve to explore a wider range of emotion and connection. And, as it will include the Russian series, and the following doodles once they are complete, it will have to be a blend of the loose and comforting in appearance pencil work that delivers a good illusion of physical space with the meticulous line work above with which space becomes only a container for the invisible.




Oh and the bruja is back. I think at this point her character is the most solid representation of the wisest part of me. And in that sense, Anima is her.