...for surreal images and worlds. somehow it's something i crave in a way but don't seem to be able to achieve myself. i love fantastic literature - Michael Ende's "the never ending story" being my all time favourite (the book - the movies suck so much they should be erased forever from the movie-data-base.) my wonderful husband did his share to enhance my love for out-of-the-box stories by introducing me to Neil Gaiman's

followed by

apart from the fact that the visual art (by Dave McKean) is just beyond any kind of praise i'm capable of phrasing other than "ahh... oh... baff... WoW!" maybe throw in a dry sob of envy... the stories are just so perfectly clear and closed in themselves, leaving nothing open even though they are about impossibilities.

"coraline" too i find delightfully out of this world - both the book and the gobsmackingly brilliant stop motion movie - as well as "stardust", a graphic novel Neil Gaiman wrote with the illustrater Charles Vess in a kind of symbiosis between text and image, one inspiring the other and vice versa, not just one way.
but still Michael Ende and Neil Gaiman were/are both great wordsmiths and a beautifully executed story hardly ever fails to catch me - Jane Austen does that for me too and she did not in the least write fantastic as in fantasy.
so what is it about surreal images and pictures that i find so alluring...? and actually i don't mean surreal as in the surrealist movement of the 1920s.
a while ago i found some images by Alexander Jansson. (you can also find him on facebook.) i was searching for something on google images - i can't remember what - and there they were. i've heard people call them sinister and i kind of get what they mean but for me that's just one of the reasons why i like them so much... they deliver a great deal of atmosphere - and if it's part of the story why shouldn't it be sinister too...

(mr. jansson kindly allowed me to post this image on my blog. it's called "twin trees market".)
i don't know a lot about how these artworks are created and honestly i'm not all that interested... don't get me wrong - i would love to know how to create this kind of art myself but when i look at and enjoy it i don't need to know how it's done, if that makes sense. i spent a considerable amount of time studying "twin trees market", enlarging it as much as i could so i could find all the details and the secrets hidden in it... i love the thought that the artist while creating this scene knew exactly who these creatures were and what they were doing... and i think mr. jansson does know. i'm not entirely sure but i think this image is part of the "ramone bosco" graphic novel which has unfortunately been postponed.
this one i found recently and these too. Modestas Malinauskas' skil and talent is obvious but it is so much more than that which makes his paitings so wonderful.
(the vehicles remind me very much of Hayao Miyazaki's "Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind", "Castle in the Sky" and "Howl's Moving Castle" which i love for their fantastic and just so different stories and the wonderful animation. "Spirited Away" and "My Neighbour Totoro" are also favourites of mine, but they don't have this steampunky flying-contraptions thing.)
anyway - i looked at Modestas Malinauskas' paintings and almost started crying with a mixture of utter joy and entrancement and incredible sadness and frustration.
it's not that i'm jealous of other artists' work - apart from the occasional annoyance with my own work not turning out the way i want it to. i know that's only a matter of practice and training... no, what i envy is the fact that they seem to have access to the place within themselves where all this wonderful imagination comes from. when i see images of flying houses in clouds, villages growing on an elephant's back or on wheels finding their own way, impossible treehouses, people harvesting fruit twice their size, hovering lanterns with wings and their own umbrellas, weird creatures just being there without any "why" or "how" and so on and so forth - and when these images are so very well done on top of it - my brain goes like "why can't i think of that?"
i know there is a place within myself too where there are stories and places like that, but they are blurry and i can't seem to find a way to make them focus... this simultaneous sensation of joy and frustration makes me feel like a bottle of coke that's been very well closed and then given a good shake. i'm stuffed up and under a lot of pressure and crying seems to be the only way out since i can't find my own surreal space to escape to...
i'm trying though... a while ago i was working on a journal and i didn't find enough paper that fitted what i had in mind so i made my own. i took some pages from a crappy novel and stenciled over them:

i know these blue stars and the moon may not look like much to most people but to me they are a sort of symbol of breaking through a barrier built up by my own brain years ago. when i was thinking of a colour to use i instantly reached for that blue (faded jeans distress ink) and then i put it back saying to myself "you can't make blue stars - stars aren't blue" and then i grabbed it again thinking something along the lines of " yes, i can make blue stars - this is my f***ing journal and i can make blue stars if i want to!" who has ever captured the true colour of stars as they appear on a night sky on paper or canvas anyway...?
when i was little i used to craft all the time. i made matchboxes with flowers on springs that would pop out when you opened them. i painted countless items just for the sake of painting something, i made things to decorate my room (and everyone else's), seasonal crafting for autumn, christmas and easter, drawing sketches of my dream house which had wheels and a roof terrace, hammocks hanging everywhere, mezzanin levels and an elderflower cordial tab in every room... and then when i entered into my teen-years i stopped. all of a sudden i felt frustrated with my own skills, the outcome of my crafting and what stopped me most of all was the suddenly occuring thought:
"what do i do with it? - what is it good for?"
i hate that thought... it ruins everything and i have to fight it pretty much on a daily basis. "do i put a butterfly here? yeah, that looks pretty. but does it have any purpose there? no, not really - it's just sticking there looking pretty. well if it's not good for anything then let's not put it there... but it looks pretty... but why should it be there just to look pretty? can't it at least have a purpose like holding a tag or something...?" that's the sort of thing that runs through my head most of the time while i'm working on books or journals - which are what i work on most at the moment.
the thing is that hereabouts people don't really get the purpose of a junk journal or mini album or art journal i'm afraid. the first question i hear when i show someone my journals or explain what i do is: "and what do you do with it? what is it for?" and then i wonder why i have an issue with that...
the thing is i'm not a painter, i don't do digital art, i can't write weird novels (i try to sometimes though) and i'm not a director and maker of awesome movies...
i do a little mixed media art on canvas sometimes, i occasionally work in my art journal and i make extravagant and time consuming cards as gifts because i usually can't afford a "better/bigger" gift... but making books and journals is my true love and with that i feel like there is more of a purpose to it than there is to pretty decor pieces that sit somewhere and collect dust - nothing against that though.
i don't use the books i make - i haven't really found the right approach to do that yet. maybe i should though - then i probably wouldn't have to bore you reading this with my rambling...
but making them is my way of getting to that place where all the wonderful but blurry images of everything that i like and find visually appealing and stimulating form their own crazy world. a world where all those things fuse together so that flowers have wings and flying with the spirits of my loved ones, where strands of lanterns are strung between all the trees, where every insect and fish glows like a firefly, where people see things as they really are and ride on donkeys that are the colour of rust or forest moss or rose petals...
they are a place for me to collect all the things i like in one place and with a little luck and imagination they turn into stories and "things" that are my own...