Secret Artist #22 — Under the Skin

The following description is from Secret Artist #22:

“Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell; And, in the lowest deep, a lower deep Still theat’ning to devour me opens wide, To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heaven.”

Paradise Lost, John Milton

As John Constable says, painting is just another word for feeling. Under the Skin is an intense feeling for me. A feeling in which the gaze of the chaos is under my skin.

I’ve created Under the Skin during a very chaotic time of my life. I was reading over Paradise Lost by John Milton, and I was constantly listening to Mica Levi’s otherworldly soundtrack for Jonathan Glazer’s film Under the Skin.

I was under intense feelings of pain, despair, anger, determination, revenge... A walk, a meditation, nothing worked; nothing I did was enough to stop the rush of feelings. That no matter how hard I try to get rid of a feeling, or a thought lingering in my brain, I was not able to do it. It was the unbeatable persistency of the situation has led me to this painting.

I wanted to throw the chaos crawling under my skin to canvas. I wanted to create hell of a heaven, hope of a despair, day of a night.

I’ve placed the look / the eyes at the center of the canvas, amidst all the chaos. I wanted the eyes & the negative space of the face to become the persistent energy source of the cacophony.

I wanted to mix up painting techniques and scribbles together so that the formal structure of the painting can be the essence of the feeling. So that the painting feels like an “urge”, before even any meaning arises.

The Secret Artists Project

The world of NFTs opens up new, creative opportunities for artists and also for the ecosystem that surrounds them. The Secret Artist Project works to curate innovative artists from inside and outside of the NFT community. We ask them for a piece of their work that has yet to be minted and add it anonymously to our collection.

This puts the focus on the art and not the artist. We want people to buy the art simply because they love it.

The Secret Artist Project has no Discord, no Telegram, no overambitious roadmap.

However, there is one very special bonus you receive with your NFT from The Secret Artist Project, and that is...

The Artist

While their identity remains a mystery to everyone else, the artist's details will be revealed to you after purchasing the NFT — as if you've discovered their signature scrawled on the back of their painting.

So now, you not only have the NFT to hang in your home or display in the Metaverse, you also have the opportunity to discover more of the artist’s work.

In addition, by holding the NFT and discovering its secrets, you become part of The Secret Artist Project community.

Those who hold secrets, hold power...

The Aims of the Secret Artist Project

— to positively impact the artist by putting their art first

— to introduce new artists to the NFT space (though we have some well-known artists in our collection too!)

— to promote art we love and collaborate with artists we trust

If you have any questions, or if you’re an artist who would like to feature your artwork in the project, please go to The Secret Artist Project collection’s Opensea page for contact details/socials https://opensea.io/collection/the-secret-artist-project

— The Merchant of Venus, Curator of The Secret Art Project