Shores of Consciousness

The themes represented in this piece are about release, compassion, surrender, abandonment, life, death, magick, dreams, transcendence, consciousness... more

by Alex Ruiz

Title

Shores of Consciousness

Artist

Alex Ruiz

Medium

Digital Art - Digital Painting

Description

The themes represented in this piece are about release, compassion, surrender, abandonment, life, death, magick, dreams, transcendence, consciousness and obviously, surreality. A whole lot:)

I'd finished this piece about halfway through reading Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami, and was struggling to give this a proper title.....and then, in chapter 43 I saw the line 'shores of consciousness', and it hit me like a ton of bricks. THAT'S THE TITLE OF THIS PIECE!

'The path leads to a special place, a light source that spins out the dark, the place where soundless echoes come from. I need to see with my own eyes what's there. I'm carrying an important, sealed, personal letter, a secret message to myself. A question. Why didn't she love me? Don't I deserve to have my mother love me? For years that question's been a white-hot flame burning my heart, eating away at my soul. There had to be something fundamentally wrong with me that made my mother not love me. Was there something inherently polluted about me? Was I born just so everyone could turn their faces away from me? My mother didn't even hold me close when she left. She turned her face away and left home with my sister without saying a word. She disappeared like quiet smoke. And now that face is gone forever. The birds screech above me again, and I look up at the sky. Nothing there but that flat, expressionless layer of gray clouds. No wind at all. I trudge along. I'm walking by the shores of consciousness. Waves of consciousness roll in, roll out, leave some writing, and just as quickly new waves roll in and erase it. I try to quickly read what's written there, between one wave and the next, but it's hard. Before I can read it the next wave's washed it away. All that's left are puzzling fragments.'


This is also dedicated to all lives lost in 2020 so far, and that their spirits have found peace...

Created in Procreate, with final adjustments in Photoshop.

Uploaded

June 16th, 2020