The Empire of the Primrose - Station 1 Do you have recurring dreams? Travel Sketches by metamodernist artist JJFBbennett The cycle always resets at dusk, like waking inside the cold architecture of an unyielding, repetitive dream. I walk the wet, cobbled veins of an ancient European city, passing beneath stone arches hung with heavy, lifeless flags, heraldry drained of colour, damp cloth clinging to wooden poles like dead skin. There is no breath of wind, only the low, humming pressure of an era turning in its sleep. I reach into an iron sconce and tear loose a torch of roaring, ragged fire. The flame casts jittering amber shadows against the masonry as I plunge down the same discrepant corridor, a passage that bends against geometry, narrowing and widening like an inhaling throat. The Empire of the Primrose - Station 2 Past the broken gargoyles. Into the moss-eaten ruins of a seated angel whose stone wings have sheared away to jagged stubs. And onwards, deeper into the vaulted h...
Get link
Facebook
X
Pinterest
Email
Other Apps
The Inhabited Pause
Get link
Facebook
X
Pinterest
Email
Other Apps
-
The Inhabited Pause
"Waiting is not merely the passage of time; it is an active, often uncomfortable internal labour."
The central figure is an anchor of introspection amidst a whirling, chaotic background of light and colour. By utilising thick, expressive brushstrokes, I’ve constructed a pose—hand to chin, face obscured—that captures the weight of self-reflection. While the figure remains grounded on a dark, solid base, the palette of searing magentas and electric purples suggests an internal landscape that is anything but silent. These "loud" colours represent the heat and tension of a mind that is fully engaged with the "now," even when that "now" feels like a dead end.
I have intentionally contrasted the grounded protagonist with a blurred, secondary figure in the background. This serves as a reminder of our collective isolation; we often wait together, each of us navigating our own internal storms in the same physical space.
This work challenges the cultural obsession with constant productivity. It invites the viewer to:
Inhabit the pause rather than leaping over it.
Observe the self as a means of turning a burden into a reflection.
Find calm inside the chaos, trusting that meaning emerges not in spite of uncertainty, but because of it.
Ultimately, Waiting Room Portrait is an argument for the beauty of stillness. It asserts that our pauses are as vital as our actions, and that by treating waiting as an art form, we find a deeper connection to the present moment—regardless of how uncertain the future may be.
This artwork is protected by U.S. and International copyright laws. Distribution and/or modification of the artwork without the written permission of the sponsor is prohibited.
The Terminal Horizon Highway The Terminal Horizon Tourist Bus Would you catch the Terminal Horizon bus? Travel sketches by metamodernist artist JJFBbennett The Long Highway Out here, the world ends not in silence, but in fire. The asphalt bleeds into cracked red earth, stretching toward a bruised horizon where the sky refuses to cool. Behind the glass, you drive chasing ghosts through a desert that forgot rain a lifetime ago. Beneath the Scorch Every road leads deeper into the furnace. Even below the surface, the rock fissures and weeps, hot steam rising through subterranean fractures where molten veins pulse in the dark, feeding an ancient, unforgiving heat. Broken Arteries What we built couldn’t hold. Rails twist into the dunes, swallowed by iron sand and wind. Bridges split down the seam, concrete splintered into raw bone, tangled rebar, and dying wires crackling into the smoke. The machines stopped; the wasteland stayed. The Last Horizon And when the road finally runs out, the...
Through the eyes of the Lost Soldier The sky is bleeding into the dirt again, and the old hunger crawls up through my boots. It no longer matters. Time does not march out here. It pools beneath a dry creek bed, stagnant and unseen. But when the moon swells, heavy and bruised with copper rust, the cold in my ribs becomes a scald. The scrub does not burn with heat. It burns with memory. Through the tangled mallee, I see the flash of artillery, the orange-red roar of a barrage that never stopped falling, trapped forever inside the rib cages of these dead gums. I taste copper on my tongue, sharp as rifle oil and dried blood. The black heavens press down, bending the whole world inward until I am trapped inside a glass bead of fire. I pace the boundary where red light cuts into deep shadow, waiting for a relief column that lost its heading eighty years ago. Everything here is parched. I am so thirsty. But I do not want water. I want your nourishment. I want your dawn, your warm pulse, as yo...
From Adelaide River to Daly Waters Somewhere south of the Adelaide River "South of the Adelaide River" explores the haunting intersection of modern progress and forgotten history in the vast stretches of the Northern Territory. At the center of the composition stands the specter of a lone soldier, a poignant symbol of profound loss and of abandoned souls swallowed by the unforgiving outback. Stripped of a specific name, era, or mission, the figure represents all those left behind by the relentless march of time—individuals whose sacrifices and stories faded into the scrubland while the world simply moved on. The striking juxtaposition of this spectral wanderer beside a towering, contemporary road train underscores a profound sense of isolation. The heavy machinery of the modern world inches forward down the isolated track, entirely oblivious to the lingering ghosts of the past tethered to the roadside. The brilliant, atmospheric lighting that breaks through the forest canopy ...
Comments
Post a Comment