Fevered Dreams, Fables, and Flashes of Memory

          Art is the stored honey of the human soul, gathered on wings of misery

and travail.

                                                                                             ―Theodore Dreiser

The world overwhelms me.

 Voices cracking with strain

pierce the haze.

White flecked lips

spewing unknowable devastations

through clenched teeth.

Tears flowing.

Faces red.

Features twist in fervor.

Muscles strain, time stretches.

The pages flutter,

a ponderous raptor

riding the thermals of rage.

Crystal clarity shatters.

With the shards of glass.

Retreating into the dark,

into the land of dream,

away from the cacophany,

away from the light.

I turn to art to make meaning out of a world that is too complicated to make meaning out of, to reconcile the material and ephemeral. I’m heavily inspired by the pictorialist movement. Using digital painting and photographic reference I blurr the lines between painting and photography. Instead of simply recording images I create them to represent specific instances, people, and stories that have had impact on how I perceive and react to the world.

                                                                           ―Christopher M. Austin