[Fiction]
You step into a dark room. You try to go back, but the path behind you has disappeared. You can only move forward. Before diving into the unknown, you try to remember the last place you visited. You’re trying to find any clue to explain what’s happening, but you can’t. You notice that your body is extremely tense. You feel a piercing pain in your jaw. It’s your teeth. How long have you been grinding your teeth? It’s as if all of a sudden your body is trying to to tell you something. You can feel your muscles tighten as you try to move. There’s no response, you’re trapped in the darkness. The only way to go is to an even darker place, or at least that is what you think.
You finally decide to go further. This dark immensity devours you, makes you anxious. As you feel the air running low, you force yourself to move. Suddenly, you notice a gleam of light amid this nothingness. Finally! You’re heading somewhere. You run, only to find yourself in the middle of a strange land. Darkness still dwells in here, but you see a fluorescent light coming out of what seems like a garden of strange flowers that catch your attention. Hypnotized by their slow dance, you approach them. Once you’re close, the ground starts to tremble and exotic plants start coming out of the ground. Your body freezes. You feel as if someone has showered you with a bucket of cold water. You rub your eyes. Perhaps by doing so the image will disappear. However, this bizarre vision is still there, in front of you. A female figure has emerged. She doesn’t have a head. Instead, the glowing flowers that mesmerized you are rooted to her neck and shoulders. She doesn’t look at you; she just continues on her way as you try to recover from the shock. Suddenly, a hand grabs you from behind and carries you from this luminescent wasteland. Among screams and confusion, you find yourself in your bedroom. Was this just a really vivid dream, or did you really ventured yourself into an unknown realm? You’ll never know.[End of Fiction]
These are the worlds that Italian artist Agostino Arrivabene depicts in his paintings. Inspired by the greatest painters of all times, he creates images with both a vibe of antiquity and freshness that makes them timeless. His use of ancient painting techniques provides his work give with a more authentic meaning. For instance, he creates his own dyes with natural materials like lapis lazuli. An important part of his artistic vision is returning to the past, in order to represent the future. One of his most used techniques is the mischtechnik used by the famous painter Albrecht Dürer, which consists of mixing egg tempera with oil paints to create a translucent sheer layer that gives the painting a mystic effect.
He considers himself an explorer of the unconscious whose paintings represent a trophy brought from bizarre and magical lands. It’s like visiting the endless realms of our mind and all those journeys from ancient myths: Persephone’s descent into the underworld, Odysseus’ many adventures on his way home, and so on. He creates unique and eerie characters coming from the darkest spots of the human psyche, to be precise, from his own mind.
If you want to see more of his mystical work, check his official website.
–
–>
We recommend:
6 Paintings That Depict The Lust And Nightmares Of Vampirism
The Excruciating Pain Of Heartbreak Through The Eyes Of 6 Works Of Art
***
Source:
Weird Fiction Review
–>
