The Dark Arts?

“Your art is so dark.” I hear that a lot.”

explosion on an alien planet?

“Your art is so dark.” I hear that a lot. “Not always,” is my response. But I can’t deny that much of what I’ve posted on Instagram and Facebook for LEVL9 tends that way. In part—although the project dates back to 2016—like the virus it grew exponentially during quarantine and from the need for escapism I felt in our political upheavals of 2020.

The fantasy world is dark and rich. As children, we thrilled to frightening fairy tales; as adults many of us love crime and corruption in our TV series. Science fiction and steampunk rely on ambiguity, futurism, machinery and atmosphere.

Because I loved dark painters like Degas, Velazquez and Bosch as a child, that impulse has always been with me. It doesn’t mean I “went to the dark side” as a person, nor that I can’t create lovely and uplifiting imagery. But I do offer you a chance to enter a fantasy world of “elemental forces colliding in pan-dimensional space,” as my work has been dubbed, and I urge you to enter it with a dreamlike sense of adventure. Like an orchid cactus, some things bloom at night. See you there.