The Mysterious Animation is a 7 part series of acrylic paintings. These paintings were created using Automatism, a technique in which an artist attempts to create without conscious or rational thought. This method, used by the early Surrealists, suppresses the conscious mind in order to create from the subconscious. The end result emerges like a psychic message and reveals a world that seems mystical and spirited.
This project started unintentionally, as a bi-product of another set of paintings. I would wipe excess paint onto blank trading cards, and over time, as they built-up with colors, a vision of a story started to emerge. The figures and landscapes became very apparent and I set to reveal what I saw. The experience felt psychic and in some ways divine. Within these paintings, I discovered a narrative; I witnessed a celestial event, the arrival of a mysterious stranger with magical influence and the dangers of following.
The title is derived from Carl Jung’s ‘Man and his Symbols’. In the chapter ‘The Secret Soul of Things’, Jung describes the artists of the Surrealist and Dada movements attempting to imbue life and meaning into inanimate objects. However, Jung noted that it was not life, but rather the artists’ own psychological projection, describing it as “…a psychic content that they and their time had lost and abandoned…’
© 2022 by Edie Schaub