Bes and Hypnagogia
Bes and Hypnagogia emerged from a place somewhere between listening and seeing, between consciousness and the drifting edge of sleep.
I think of it as a visual response to that liminal space where sound becomes colour, rhythm becomes gesture, and rational thought slowly gives way to intuition.
As a contemporary Australian artist, my creative process is deeply intuitive. I rarely begin with a predetermined outcome. Instead, I listen, experiment and allow the work to reveal itself.
Music has become an important part of that process. I listen deeply and repeatedly, allowing rhythm, texture, silence and atmosphere to find their way into the work. I am not trying to illustrate music.
I am searching for a visual language that responds to what I hear and, more importantly, to what I feel.
For Bes and Hypnagogia, I spent many hours listening to Nox by Taylor Brook and Vicki Ray. I returned to the album again and again, allowing the music to settle somewhere beyond conscious thought.
Gradually, colours, forms and shapes began to appear in my mind. There was no sketch, no plan and no clear destination. I simply followed the feeling.
Of the album’s fourteen tracks, it was one composition that truly stayed with me. A little over ten minutes in length, it continued to resonate long after the music had stopped.
Eventually, that persistent feeling became Bes and Hypnagogia.
How Did Bes and Hypnagogia Come About
The work developed through layers of acrylic paint, inks and mica, building and disrupting the surface until something began to emerge. I then photographed small details with a macro lens, stitched those fragments together using a scanner, and made a small amount of digital adjustment to bring the final work into focus.
There was no AI involved (I use an open source software PhotoScape). The process remained an intuitive conversation between physical materials, photography, technology and chance.
I have always felt closely connected to the natural world.
Nature has taught me to look carefully at surfaces, patterns, fragments, growth, decay and the almost invisible structures that surround us.
Music and poetry have become another kind of landscape for me.
Their rhythms and silences often find their way into the painted surface without my consciously deciding that they should.
Each artwork becomes a process of layering, erasure, revelation and renewal. I move between intention and chance, construction and destruction, knowing when to act and when to stop.
Most importantly, I have learned to trust the process allowing intuition to lead me somewhere I could not have reached through rational thinking alone.
The title Bes and Hypnagogia came afterwards. I had to look up the meaning of hypnagogia, and when I discovered it described the transitional state of consciousness between wakefulness and sleep, it felt almost perfect for the work.
It is sometimes described as threshold consciousness, a fleeting state where vivid dreamlike imagery, unexpected sensations and spontaneous creative insights can emerge.
That idea immediately resonated with what I had experienced while making this piece.
For me, Bes and Hypnagogia exists somewhere between waking and dreaming, between listening and seeing, between the known and the unknown.
It is part of my continuing exploration of music inspired abstract art and mixed media abstract artworks, where intuition, sound, nature and imagination meet.
I hope the work offers the viewer a similar sense of passage.
Perhaps a journey towards some distant, undiscovered place.
Perhaps somewhere much closer, within the quiet and mysterious landscape of the inner self.
Inspired by: Nox
Music: Taylor Brook, composition and electronics; Vicki Ray, piano
