The Crater

School has brain-damaged me - Now I'm only able to create artwork if I have a deadline? Madness!

This is my first assignment for the online art course I'm currently taking. The theme was fantastic art, meaning surrealistic or dadaistic art.

When I was younger, I used to have these periods of depression. My therapist and I classified it as "being stuck inside the crater". Apparently, this is a method of dealing with emotions - classifying them, relating them with images and situations and thus making them less vague and more manageable. I can say it helped. This crater is nowhere near as scary and abyss-like as "The Crater" of my childhood.

Psychologically, I think craters will stir something in almost everybody. This wide, open space where anything, good or bad can happen. Or a hollow place inside ourselves, perhaps? Therefore I thought it fitting as a motif for a surrealistic artwork.

I tried implementing a technique Max Ernst (surrealist and dadaist) used, called frottage. I hope to use that technique again in other works where it hopefully will stand out more and get the attention in the picture plane that it deserves. In this work it kind of drowns in all the other things.

Materials: acrylics, oil pastels and water colouring pencils on drawing paper. Frottage and scraping off paint to create lines.

Used this lovely photo as a reference: [link]