𝕺𝖓 π•°π–π–•π–‘π–”π–—π–†π–™π–Žπ–”π–“ π–Žπ–“ 𝕬𝖗𝖙
As of late, I have been making an attempt to improve my work. In the past, I was more concerned with style over substance, but this isn't to say substance was never a consideration. To quote Baker, a contemporary of mine, when addressing my work in relation to the platform I share it on, "very substantial work for what is a fairly ephemeral platform". Recently, I have figured if I'm going to be taking that to heart, and truly pursue my vocation, then I better go leagues deeper into it.

When I went on my hiatus in Sep 2017, I had started contemplating on how to improve my psychedelic art. I first acknowledged that my work being inspired by video games meant I had to try and draw principles from that medium that I might be able to incorporate into my paintings. Among other things, one such point of interest was an exploratory aspect.
I will use three of my favorite games for examples hereafter; The Legend of Zelda; A Link to the Past, Final Fantasy, and Fable II.

In all of these games, there is a great element of exploration that makes them gratifying and fun. I recall a time playing Fable II where I wandered around in the backwoods and around the far edges of maps, and was rewarded with caves to enter, ruins to explore. I felt like I had discovered real secrets unknown to anyone else. In Final Fantasy, traveling from town to town, and traveling to far off lands with new challenges to take on, really lent itself to the grandness of the adventure. There was one point in the game, in the sea shire, on the highest floor, where you could see other rooms with treasure and mermaids, but could find no way to get to them. How could one get there? What did the mermaids have to say? What treasure did they have cached over there? In the Legend of Zelda, discovering the alter underneath the smithy where you conjure up a creature of magic, a sort of trickster, or just wandering aimlessly through the lost woods, or the eastern palace, taking in the sights of death mountain, with it's sparkling rocks and maze like cliffs and tunnels, it all gave you a sense of a real world of discovery and mystery, rich with landmarks and highlights. When talking about his inspiration for the game, Shigeru Miyamoto said "I went hiking and found a lake. It was quite a surprise for me to stumble upon it. When I traveled around the country without a map, stumbling upon amazing things as I went, I realized how it felt to go on an adventure like this".
So I started to wonder how I might be able to make explorable images. I first thought to make it some how apparent, whether covertly or not, that you could use your imagination to interact with the environment within the picture plane. I don't typically estimate my audience to be that smart or witting or even that imaginative, but for what it's worth, my underestimation of my audience does not prevent me from trying that approach. For instance, in the painting, VAULT OF SLIME, I have depicted two incorporeal treasure chests, and a door that needs two keys, as well as a spiked incline with a sort of button or switch at the foot of it. If you are a clever person, you might try to engage with this painting, though it has a pretty straight forward set of circumstances and ideas that aren't very complicated.

I then thought more on how I personally enjoy paintings, and how I tend to look at brush strokes and textures and colors therein, and I began to think of them as little treasures inside a painting. Tucking these away in obscure places, or in smaller details, off to the side, in the background, gives these paintings their own little easter egg hunt. I doubt anyone else will ever be able to determine what parts of these paintings are a result of that, but they can be found none the less, by those of a more analytical nature, and hopefully enjoyed by those who find them.
Something else I thought to do came from a criticism I once got, about how busy my work tends to be. I figured a bit of solid ground, a space you can rest your eyes upon, to touch and go from, may have been in order. In this way, this space may opperate as sort of central hub, like in the painting MASTER QUEST, where the center is generally pretty open, where as the sides are totally populated with explorable spaces, some more abstract than others.

This specific element of exploration has many potential avenues to, for want of another word, explore. Currently, I am working on some geometric armatures to guide my future paintings, which hopefully will lend itself well to improving the explorable spaces in my paintings.