Sebastian Eriksson Artist Research

When first viewing this piece of art made me feel a mixture of different emotions but I had an overwhelming feeling of sadness towards it. I like the piece very much because I think its surrealism allowed my mind to think and create my own interpretation and story of what could’ve happened within the piece which makes it much more personal and relatable to me. As a teenager, life has lots of struggles to face within day to day life so seeing a portfolio of work to do with depression and mental illnesses in the younger generation makes it very relatable and even suggests an element of understanding and acceptance to know that someone else has gone through the same pain and emotions as you have. This piece of art in particular made me feel emotional towards it because it feels relatable to me. In my own collection of loved possessions is my guitar; something that I’ve used over the years as a cope mechanism whenever I didn’t know how to deal with my emotion and to express how I really felt towards people and situations. What fascinates me the most about this piece is the maturity and the awareness of all the things happening around him and how he expresses them. I see this piece as a paradox that describes a person who could potentially have problems such as schizophrenia, insanity, depression or other mental problems. The peaceful look in his face is really hiding the screaming inside his head which makes his own mind eat him up. I feel as if I can relate to this because I have periods in my life where I feel like this. It creates an illustration of his thoughts and pain. To me, this piece suggests the theme of lost love and death which is most likely a relatable theme to a lot of people. Being teenagers, means it’s a prime time in life to express emotions and discover more things such as relationships and love. But being at such a vulnerable age, most of the time things end in heartbreak and loss which can develop some people’s characters and build towards their maturity and adulthood, but some people who aren’t as emotionally strong can be majorly effected by these sorts of situations and find it very hard to recover from them, which could eventually build up to emotional breakdowns and mental illnesses. From a personal perspective, I can relate to this theme from previous broken hearts and feeling lonely in the world and it is something that has taken a long time to overcome.

Sebastian is an 18 year old surrealist from Sweden. He is a surreal artist. He first started with realistic portraits, but came across a painting by Rene Magritte and became “fascinated with the concepts behind the visuals,” and has been “trying to expand his sub consciousness.” For the past two years, Eriksson delved into the world of macabre art using charcoal and pastel to highlight the depth and darkness within his works. Recently however, he has started experimenting more with watercolour, oil and acrylic paint. He has become quite accomplished as an artist; his works have been in exhibitions and used as album covers. He describes his love for art as his life and his way of survival- to pay rent. Through his work, he likes to express his feelings and/or ask questions which trouble him. What fascinates me the most here is his maturity and the awareness of all the things happening around him and how he expresses them.

In this drawing, there’s been a lot of tone created through the medium of pencil and chalk. On the top left side of the piece, he has used dark tones to surround the man playing guitar whilst on the bottom right where the figure of a woman lays the background is a lot lighter and less dense. This could symbolise how she is a ghostly figure, almost heavenly, and he is just a normal, breathing man who is suffering the pains of earth without his lover. The texture of lines and shading used to draw the man and his clothes are quite harsh and dense which causes a strong contrast between the delicate, pale, fragile lines of the woman as she is metaphorically personified as the roots of a tree but also as the guitar. This shows how elegant and ‘perfect’ she was/is in his eyes and how he is plain compared. There is no real space or depth shown within the piece and that is because Erikson wanted to create a paradox and capture the thoughts of someone in despair. This can be linked to the fact that the man’s body language tells us that he is sitting down but there is no subject to show that he is physically doing so. The man also has his eyes shut whilst playing guitar which could symbolise how the only way he can see his deceased love or feel close to her is by playing guitar. The surrealism of the piece allows us to make up our own story and physiologically makes us relate it to our own lives and experiences.