Artworks · Arkhive

These paintings (2013-2020) are made on black cardstock with Posca paint pens, which use water-based acrylic – and other brands. I developed that style to reproduce my mystical and oneiric visions, which in the right setting (dear darkness) appear as bright colours against a nighttime background. Some call them phosphenes, I call them teachings. This art was born from a deep need to integrate the extraordinary experiences that life put on my path, as language alone proved to be insufficient. I consider art to be deeply therapeutic. These simple lines, dots and patterns drawn from light gave me a framework to understand, heal and explore my own authentic neurology. To this day, this is my favourite way of making visual art, because deeply shamanic. You can find the new stuff in my Obah 2D paintings, Olos 3D eggs and Zoa oracle.

These drawings (2012-2013) were the first ones I made in my early twenties, first as doodles with a ballpoint pen, then as more advanced compositions with black fineliner and felt pens. The Insomnia series were illustrations for the songs of my first album – a tradition I now pursue with the Umbi drawings. The iconographic symmetry translated an unfolding struggle between the Manichean (good vs. evil) and Taoist (neutral + positive) versions of the black-and-white complementarity. After that phase, I found a style that suited me more: the colourful Posca paintings. That evolution reflects a neural expansion from a polarized and rationalist mindframe... to a more open-ended, inclusive, empirical outlook.

Here's a mix of pieces spanning from 2013 to 2018, various experiments with liquid watercolour and drawing gum, along with coloured pencil drawings. As a young amateur artist, it was vital for me to explore creativity: I was just trying out stuff and just followed my joy. Some are mandalas, some are animistic metaphors, some are alien-esque ventures into strange states of mind. Eventually, these colourful studies gave rise to the more organized and consistent forms of art I make today – the main successors here being the Muni. These little lunatic creatures I draw today, bridge the lost links between childhood imagination, outer space, dream states and the plant kingdom. Yeah, I know.

Ah, the old times! It all started with digital art on my screen, which was where I spent most of my days. I would first draw with a pen on paper, then scan the sheet, then proceed to vectorize everything in Illustrator... using only a mouse. Although it makes me laugh now, I had tons of ambition at the time and even cocreated a collective (La Pieuvre) with a couple of arty friends from university – who eventually dumped me when my spiritual journey started taking too much space. Today we hear about ayahuasca and meditation, but at the time I scared everyone with my spontaneous shamanic experiences. I was only 21. These were years of festive creativity: concerts and parties, albums and drawings... Most of these digital artworks are either illustrations inspired by my own song lyrics, or posters for the few gigs I played at the time.