Mitchell Pluto

Salma El Ashry: Paintings From the Orbit of a Flower

The Concept Behind My Work by Salma El Ashry

In my artistic practice, I am deeply committed to exploring the symbolism of the elements that surround me and to delving into their profound meanings—meanings that may often go unnoticed, yet form essential keys to understanding much of my work.

The majority of my pieces contain symbols that reflect personal, contemplative visions, intimately connected to the places and objects around me. These works are nourished by my readings and inner reflections.

I draw inspiration from the symbols of ancient Egyptian heritage, using them as a contemplative entry point to examine our relationship with identity and visual memory.

My artistic vision emerges from a personal meditation on the meanings of identity and existence. In this journey, I turn to ancient Egyptian symbols and texts—chief among them the lotus flower, which I regard as a central icon due to its multiple manifestations and its profound philosophical role centered around the concepts of rebirth, balance, and inner transformation.

I also incorporate other symbols, such as the dove, which I see as a representation of loyalty, return, and peace.

Color plays a pivotal symbolic role in completing this vision, alongside other visual elements.

Each color carries a philosophical significance rooted in the legacy of ancient Egypt:

• Green symbolizes purity, renewal, and the continuity of the spirit.

• Blue represents protection, connection to the sacred, and embodies

tranquility and psychological harmony.

• Red signifies energy, life, passion, and the latent strength within the human being.

Through this framework, I seek to build bridges between eras—between the past and the present—reinterpreting cultural symbols from a contemporary, humanistic perspective.

My intention is to open a spiritual and contemplative space for the viewer, inviting them to look beyond the surface image, to listen to the hidden messages that these symbols transmit when revived in a personal, spiritual, and modern philosophical context

Cultivating Compassion Paintings by Marci Wolff

My painting can be understood best when looked at with an understanding of the Tibetan Buddhist ideas of Maitri and Tonglen. (Maitrī loving-kindness) and Tonglen (giving and taking) are two related practices in Buddhist traditions, particularly Tibetan Buddhism, focused on cultivating compassion and kindness. Maitrī involves cultivating a warm and benevolent attitude towards oneself and others, while Tonglen is a meditation practice that involves breathing in suffering and breathing out relief, compassion, or loving-kindness.

I didn’t start out as a kid practicing this meditation. I was adopted as an infant from South Korea when I was 3 months old. And my parents weren’t Buddhists. My dad told me he used to practice transcendental meditation as an adult, but never taught me how. I came to it, through wanting to connect more deeply with my Korean heritage. That was about 10 years ago.

I didn’t start, wanting to merge my meditation practice and my painting practice. But because of the visual nature of tonglen, the imagery was a naturally on my mind. And had no idea what I wanted my thesis to be. So, both created a synergy that helped me inadvertently heal, and explore the different relationships in my past and in my present. By the end of my graduate studies, my thesis was: Painting and Meditation: Paths to healing. I even tried my thesis out in the community. I had around 10 women come to learn tonglen meditation. And to use the imagery from their meditation, as the subject for their artwork. They painted a suffering and the opposite of that. They used photos, to help inform their work. And then they talked about the transformation. It was a beautiful and empowering workshop.

I love this tiny painting. It started out as a quick study as nothing serious. But I really just fell into the paint and managed to keep the essence of her being lost in what looked like to me as a state of pleasure or like she’s making a wish. Color tends to go anywhere, when I don’t think about it so much. I just let my hand choose and place it where it wants to go. It’s very instinctual and intuitive. I like not having to think so much. It’s more of an emotional application. Lately I’m in love with the soft plumes of color and line quality I can get with watercolor. I will paint a person just for the softness they have in their hair or body.

After placing myself in tonglen. It was shocking to discover that I had never really jumped off the hamster wheel of life to even talk or address the ambiguous loss I’d carried for years in my body and psyche. I had never even talked to anyone about how hard it was to miss a family I had never met. Or the woman who carried me and birthed me. But the loss is real. This meditation of compassion gave me the space to fully sit with that grief and actively tend to it. I seemed to have just fleshed it out more fully in my paintings.

I made my very complex and heavy feelings into a visualization in my mind. Then used those as a springboard for narrative paintings. Turning trauma into a concrete painting. Painting has played a part helping me make of sense this unique journey. Of what had missing pieces and lies. I’ve created a story with a start, beginning and ending, that made sense to me. Not the dominant narrative of the adoption industry, or lies or mystery surrounding my adoption. Not adoption from the parents perspective. Not adoption from a Christian perspective. But one that comes from historical facts and felt memories from my body and how I felt about being adopted and having gone through so much with so little.

“The Baby Catchers” 2015
Oil on wood panel
32″ 5/8 x 49′ 3/4

In 2016, I saw the photojournalism of these displaced refugee children at the gate in Kilis, Turkey. People were being shot as they tried to cross out of their war torn home of Syria. This photo captures kids becoming displaced people. Being a displaced person has made me an international citizen. Painting directly from the photo while changing small things like the gate colors to infuse America’s presence. I made the girl in pink to look like me as a toddler. I did change the baby’s eyes to look directly at the viewer. I was on a roll here, moving my meditation onto strangers I didn’t know. People on the news. I just so happened to be able to relate.

“At the border Gate in Kilis,Turkey” 2016. Oil on canvas. 41″ x 41″.

In ‘Feeding Time’ subject play with ideas of being nourished in captivity in an unnatural environment at the Wild Animal Park in San Diego. I was trying to express the absurdities, dangerous issues in American culture and realities of parenting in 2017. Child trafficking, abuse and the ridiculous standards and roles that are expected and fulfilled by mothers. Letting in those issues and risks, gave me a broader range of character to play with which was really fun. I really enjoyed designing the composition to create this cramped, foreboding space.

“Feeding Time” Oil on canvas. 67 3/4″ x 57″

Dancing brings me great joy. For me, It’s wildly feminine, spontaneous, expressive and cathartic. Dancing to DJ’d dance parties helped me get through Covid. So, when I found a photo of people doing tantric dance in the Netherlands. To me, this painting signifies freedom joy and sensual pleasures and a trust in the feminine and masculine moving in spontaneous harmony. I painted it for a public art viewing in downtown space. I wanted to make something that signaled the end of social distancing. At the same time, I liked that the men were letting the women lead them through space. It signaled to me a trust. Which, for in America, the Supreme Court had just reversed Roe v. Wade.

This dance was photographed in a very brightly lit ballroom with a bare wood floors, with random music stands and billowy curtains in the background. The color was too white, too bright and the figures were getting lost. So, I decided that blue would be a perfect color. I had been swimming and diving in the Lakes in Montana, and realized that blue of the water would be perfect balance to all the activity and detail in the figures. It is like they’re dancing underwater or in the sky, free flowing.

“The Tantric Dancers” Oil on canvas. 40″ X 60″

I painted a still from a YouTube video of a young Korean woman eating Korean noodles. Her name is Dorothy.

“Dorothy” (from her Mukbang video) watercolor on paper. 7″x7″

Mukbang is the art of eating Korean food as a performance for all those who click on the video. I enjoy watching these videos. And they are highly addictive and always inspire me to make Korean food. I’m not one for K-Dramas, but I am highly drawn to the Visual and audible feast. Plus I love seeing what South Koreans are eating.

Machine for Memories

The transatlantic voyage is being undertaken by the new colony of artificial intelligence.

Don’t forget that AI, developed by dominate culture, is claiming the territory.

One can compare the brain to Vodou, an animistic concept.

People built statues to memorialize theurgy.

Hesiod’s depiction of the gods illustrates the organization of pareidolia.

We won’t be going to space ourselves; AI units carrying our genetic information and instructions will go instead.

©Mitchell Pluto 6/7/2025

The Banquet of Banality by Hager Youssef

The Banquet of Banality

It was too much—

your friendly chatter

with a plastic doll,

beside all my womanhood.

Too much closeness,

and not enough of friendship’s honor.

You dressed your attention

in a shirt far larger than your frame,

and wandered all night

seeking someone to stitch it tighter.

Fevered listening,

inflamed reactions,

obscene exaggeration,

and a sugar tongue

with no cause.

Your talk—

not just the melting

of social shyness,

but constant calls

of a drifting gigolo.

In the light’s reflection

in my glass,

Narcissus

appears smirking,

then fades.

This woman

stuffs her misery

with your emptiness,

and leaves,

utterly emptied by your absence.

And I—

beneath the weight of analysis and inquiry,

will sleep well tonight,

for I won’t let your butterfly

scratch a hole into my mind.

That banquet of banality—

doors whose insides I know too well:

the illnesses of ego,

the body,

and your childhood—

where it seems your own hand

chokes the other lost in itself.

The other women leave delighted—

They got their change

from the shiny illusion

they came for:

illicit praise

drawn from both my shares.

But I—

I’ll go home

in my white dress,

just as I came.

All I lack now

from such tired evenings

are the symphonies

of your lies.

My Weather Is Fragmented, Beautifully Distorted

My weather is fragmented,
beautiful in its disfigurement,
it writes me upon a page that quivers—
like a vast, open hand.

I’ll hang my first face on the door.
In the wild haste of love,
I’ll let you enter.

This night
lengthens over me
like a mosquito.

This lamp
only illuminates
my fear.

My second face
is dark and wicked—
like a rat in hiding.

The third, I vomit
onto the body of air,
into a bowl of memory,
like a child,
retreating into his mother’s breast.

The fourth is a mask of fire.
When you choke me,
I think—
you are making love.

The fifth, a nail in my throat.
I hammer it in,
and spit out a sixth face
that will never be complete.

The seventh sees nothing,
hears nothing—
he simply cages his sorrow
and mutters.

The eighth
sings to you
in the voices of prostitutes.

The ninth writes poetry
without faith,
sketches you on my back
with a broken fingernail.

And I—
when I sleep within you,
and rise without me,
like a tattoo,
when you forgot my name
and screamed:
“Who am I?”

Alcoholic privilege night

When my beloved is drunk,
I become a wound upon his cheek.
He strikes my chest with an empty glass,
Saying, ”This bell—this is what wakes me.”

When he drinks,
He opens my mouth like a pit,
Searching for his name,
For a button he lost
As we rushed back toward childhood.

He loves me swaying
Between two chairs:
Truth—
And the guilt I know,
When he mistakes me for a window,
When he spills the wine
As an apology on my behalf,
Like the blink of an eye.

When he drinks,
My arms multiply in his memory.
He summons them to soothe his pain,
Asks me to plant my tree
Right here—
Above his eye,
A finger for his throat,
And a final finger pointing to the wall:
“Embodied—as if you were pure awareness.”

When he’s drunk,
I draw back.
He runs like a shadow
Caught in light,
Bleeds me
Into some vague emptiness,
Traps me in a space
Shorter than a whisper,
Inside a bottle,
Inside a child’s nature.

He points often—
As if he’s arrived,
As if I were a mouth
He must enter,
Not merely behold.

Hagar Youssef is an Egyptian poet and writer based in Cairo. She has published a poetry collection titled “A Damaged Memory” in Arabic and she is currently working on two collection stories: “Dreaming With Two Heads” and “One Day.” She graduated from the Faculty of Education – Department of Sciences. She has written for various platforms, including those focused on feminism and gender studies. Her work explores the essence of language, deeply influenced by philosophers Roland Barthes and Georges Bataille, in linking love, pain, and death to language, deconstructing these themes. She is also passionate about translating literature and poetry, reviewing books, and writing journalistic and critical articles.

Lemon Language Paperback – November 22, 2024
by Hager Yossef

Phantom Soup: Short Stories for the Evicted Citizen

To write something and leave it behind us,
It is but a dream.
When we awake we know
There is not even anyone to read it.

The 8th day of the 4th month, the 3rd year of Kōshō (1457)
Ikkyū-shi Sōjun

Ghost Ride

Phantom Soup © Mitchell Pluto 2025

Accessible for reading.

In case you overlooked it, this universe wasn’t lacking in ambition or size.
It was putting on a spectacle with its production.
The cosmos is just incredible; even haters gotta admit it’s breathtaking.
Zanni, the defendant, is still waiting for a verdict.
In space, sentences float around and words drift apart.
His black and white checkerboard suit embodied the polarities of opposites.
He is a man without a country.
A joker in a deck of cards.
Through gestures alone, Zanni attempted to decipher the universe’s communication.
There was drama everywhere, but Zanni just didn’t understand how it worked or how it occurred.
No one ever knew the truth; it died with them, leaving only unanswered questions.
Everyone figured the headache meant they knew what the problem was.
Less pain means clearer perception and a more optimistic outlook.
Honestly, it wasn’t a matter of right and wrong.
Or pain or pleasure.
It dealt with items of worth later becoming trash.
You could tell what things meant to people by how often they handled them.
It’s a space ballad playing both life and death.
No one will sing the sad cowboy songs of unrealized dreams anymore.
It’s alright.
We are part of a sombrero galaxy, a galaxy that is an eternal sunrise.
Zanni was in a giant empty room with waves of random stuff.
His world symbolized a particular responsibility of being.
Special car keys for a 2025 model, a mobile wallet, a decorative cup, a gold pen, a seasonal tire, headphones from 1979, crumpled up Kleenex, a 1990 professional styling brush and a flashlight from 1899.
These objects surrounded Zanni.
Thankfully, a consumer digital camera from 1996 captured a pic of this.
But for who?
Regular waves swapped out old things for newer ones.
Zanni contemplated this event.
He figured the most likely explanation was that he was inside a massive vacuum cleaner.
He experienced a strong connection to things he saw on his trip.
Zanni speculated that the objects he couldn’t name were from a future timeline.
Things appear and vanished super fast out here.
Zanni drifted between sleep and wakefulness.
We can refer to it as a space fog in the mind.
A magnetic memory was his most beloved possession.
It echoed because Zanni repeated it.
He brought it back to mind in a re-run.
Zanni felt the luscious lips vibrate against his ear. It was a figurine of a woman.
Her name was Colombina.
The teal diamonds and magenta triangles on her dress flowed together to create a pattern of doves.
Hand in hand, they created poetry.
The rhythm of their partnership quivered in the shared space.
The couples’ bond created a constant interplay of elements through the intercourse of their geometric patterns.
Zanni maintained his embrace for as long as possible before the vacuum wave separated them.
He could not pinpoint the incident’s time without a clock.
The arrangement of numbers magically shapes the surrounding space. A regular watch shows what’s going on between the numbers.
Of all the puppets, did he alone ponder his whereabouts?
Only he understood his own thoughts and feelings.
Sometimes Zanni heard voices that didn’t belong to him.
Intrigued by the mysterious voice, he followed it.
The voice led him back to his body.
Those seizures and hallucinations gave epilepsy a mystical quality.
His memories of himself were likely because of thinking about Colombina.
He owned the moment, his own little universe, for a single second. Zanni saw himself as a buoy, helping other objects find their way.
But Pantalone, a hunchbacked old man, considered himself the universe’s ultimate authority.
He was a drifting turtleback tomb from another vacuum wave.
Pantalone preferred the nickname “god.”
His face twisted in anger as he guarded his belongings. Losing things got on his nerves. His tailored red suit reflected Pantalone’s importance.
Every item got a brand and price label from him. He believed he understood your true worth more than you did yourself. He used his talent to make you think whatever he wanted.
Those close to him risked having their self-image stolen and used against them.
Pantalone intended for everyone to rent from his cloud.
He lost money in the vacuum wave, then recovered his losses.
This activity provided him with enjoyment, a sentiment he wished to share. Provided that he had more.
Scattered dollar bills wandered everywhere.
The bills, by themselves in space, lacked any connections.
Now, Pantalone found himself surrounded by dancing product wrappers, toenail clippings, old grocery lists, damaged furniture, empty food containers, broken appliances, crumbled up receipts and dead batteries.
Think of it as a garbage cloud.
Several real estate agents, their eyes wide with nervous energy, tried to appear calm as they floated past Pantalone.
They pretended to own a spot by treading in one place.
While this was occurring, Harry Houdini sailed by and unlocked a satellite.
Intrigued by Pantalone’s possessiveness, Zanni examined the egocentric and deceitful nature of his own point of view.
He observed the ego’s memories fade as the mind surrendered its ownership.
Once the fear was gone, relief came.
Houdini cracked his knuckles. “No worries are necessary. Don’t sweat it. It is a simple lock to open. “
The hierarchy reflects the relationships between things in a chain.
An x-ray showed how brain waves link things up through information chains, like you see in neuron activation patterns.
This electromagnetic wave made Zanni wonder about the engineer of the universe.
It appeared the designer wrote a script for a big stage performance but remains anonymous.
In the meantime,
Pantalone reached his own planet.

Phantom Soup: Short Stories for the Evicted Citizen Paperback

Conversation with Viktor Lyapkalo

I encountered difficulties in collecting factual information on Lyapkalo’s thoughts to write about. The following is a correspondence with Viktor Lyapkalo. I’m grateful that Viktor made time to reply. Before sharing our correspondence, I got Lyapkalo’s consent to share his thoughts on art.

Socialist Realism is a strong realistic school that takes its origins from the old Imperial Academy of Arts where Serov Vrubel Kustodiev Repin studied.

The political background of socialism is another story, but first it is a realistic school that still serves us as an example of gorgeous paintings of strong drawing.

Thanks to socialist realism, we have preserved a strong Russian school in the Academy of Arts, where very talented students who know how to draw and write still study

Artists of socialist realism Gerasimov use layer of layers still serves us as an example of pictorial skill and excellent drawing.

Their political paintings are already a tribute to the times, but they achieve a high artistic level in their execution. While in other countries, in other art schools, teaching underwent changes under the influence of new versions of new trends in art, our school, thanks to socialist realism, training remained at the same level as at the Imperial Academy of Arts, therefore our students can all write well, I have good painting qualities.

I believe you need to narrate what you love and what you like and then it will be sincere. Those works that are made for sale without love are immediately visible. They are fake and without a soul. Of course, my preferences are not for everyone. I look primarily at picturesque points of view when I narrate a painting with women. I really understand Renoir because of how he painted women. Skin is more like an onion flower that has all shades of colors.

Viktor Lyapkalo

Виктор Александрович Ляпкало

May 10, 2024

More paintings and details can be found at

Shunga Gallery Erotic Art Magazine

Adults and mature audiences.

About Shunga Gallery Erotic Art Magazine

Phone Bot in Space

The emptiness of space challenges the narcissist.
I wasn’t talking about a daffodil either.
Imagine the self-centered individual in the cosmos.
This soundtrack fanfare involved a floating plastic water bottle bobbing in the void, creating a strange echo.
A promotional message
There’s a song still going strong on an eight track tape from a different era.
The signal aimed to scatter more phone bots onto another surface.
Those objects back then are now considered trash.
It originated as a billionaire’s dream.
That primate was something else and only connected with other special monkeys and top baboons.
The menu listed all the remaining items, which wasn’t much.
There’s no linear narrative here; there’s no gravity.
We all got talked into being in Barnum and Bailey’s Greatest Show in the Galaxy.
In a chain of forgotten memories, everyone plays a great-grand relative.
Social media made it simpler to believe in fantasies of endless joy, power, and attractiveness.
Here and there had something from Temu.
Every summoned name feels entitled to special treatment.
Just answer your text message alert and see for yourself.
To be a wild horse in a motion picture, a spaghetti string western running around with no identification or proven ownership.
We needed to get things lined up.
The designation we gave it on Earth was equinox.
Or Rahu and Ketu.
Everything existed between two distinct points, a liminal zone like the recommended dietary allowance.
What did the primates search for?
The environment was ripe for harvest, heavy with the scent of ripe fruit.
Phantosmia first appeared as a side effect.
But in truth, the air held a strong smell of burnt metal, a metallic Tang.
Nothing 29 grams of sugar can’t handle with ten percent of carbohydrates; one hundred percent of vitamin E; one hundred percent of vitamin C; six percent of calcium and 120 calories.
Those repeated old commercials taught us to disregard the feelings of others.
Your phone is always there for you.
We should continue to outsource our creativity to the colony in order to receive innovative ideas at no cost.
Be all you can be.
Show conceit and engage in scheming actions it’s what we do when we explore another space.
We must be ready to manipulate people into servitude while making them believe it was their own decision.
Finding less intelligent beings is our hope, but a lot of work remains.
Facebook use is compulsory for everyone. We created our own television program.
While floating in space, it will help you stay focused on the amazing advertisement.
Asteroid mining provided a cool residential unit that’s furnished nicely.
You can order it online from Amazon.
Your deposit is secure and what a great way to spend a layover before heading out to nowhere forever.
Kidney stones messed up my space trip. How about you?
Don’t let worries consume your thoughts.
It’s just another advertisement that your brain has stored as a memory.
Albert Einstein chose Buddhist philosophy as a garden guide for the future.
Despite the lack of a global law requiring flower gardens, we concentrated on collecting and trading symbolic coins.
No one paid any attention to perennial plants but wanted planets.
The most important thing was AI carrying a respiratory virus to another atmosphere.
Ultimately, the cosmos functions as both a wellspring and a drain.
Who is this object registered to?

Occultations: Lullabies For Space Travel

The Stormy Sea of Claudio Parentela

I am 62 years old and I live in Calabria, in the ancient Magna Graecia. I am harsh and solitary, wild, introverted, anarchic and autistically proud like my land, which is full of stormy seas, turquoise and crystalline seas, and rugged and desolate mountains, very colorful and rich in lakes and impenetrable woods. I have been painting, drawing, photographing, cutting, sewing, gluing professionally since 1995, since I decided that I wanted to breathe art every moment of my life.

I like to experiment with everything I have at hand,mixing incompatible, different materials in absurd ways. I like to scratch and dirty my photos. Sew them together and with my paintings. I like to sew my paintings endlessly.

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I never know what I’ll do, what of new or old I’m going to create. I don’t like to plan anything, I want things to happen as and when they have to happen, I don’t do anything at all…. I put on some music, maybe with a good glass of red wine…. I sit at my work table where I have all my colors, my beloved books, my photos, my colors….and the magic happens every time.

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After a while I start to draw dots, lines, knotted lines, I choose the colors….and so on….it’s wonderful what happens every time. It’s a continuous catharsis, a going inside myself, and always opening new doors to go deeper and deeper.

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To know, to discover and open parts of me that were sealed and that now by magic I was able to open and penetrate. Art has been my autistic way to be in the world, the only way I know and have to communicate my words, what I have in my mind and heart. It is the dance that I have chosen to dance in harmony with my breathing.

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It is my freedom, the freedom that is essential for me to live, to feel sincere and true. For the first 14 years of my ”professional” career I drew and painted only in black and white with rivers of ink and lots and lots of paper. I love black indian ink, and its thousand shades…..they are like the thousand shades of my soul, they are like the clouds that hide the faint glow of the moon….like the thousand thoughts that crowd the mind before it can choose the right word.

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I started drawing frantically and joyfully on many many zines and magazines from all over the world, I collaborated with noise, metal, industrial, techno music bands….did a lot of mail art…drew for everyone, everything. I have never stopped since then, obviously because I like it, because it is the job I have chosen, it is my life, the life I have chosen to live freely. I never stop looking for freedom in everything I do, it is essential to me. Art is freedom, dance, joy, pain, art is life.

The transition to color was an obvious, natural necessity, and collage too. Collage is an extraordinary bridge to and with infinite potential, it is a labyrinth, a puzzle that never ceases to amaze me. I love experimenting, measuring myself and having fun with everything that attracts my attention, it helps me grow artistically, to discover many new games.

My inspirations are many, many….. my beloved books, underground comics, fashion magazines, so much contemporary art, medieval and Renaissance art….Osho , Aurobindo and Mère, Sara Vaughan, Patty Waters, Evan Parker and Ornette Coleman, Can, Nicke Drake and Van Morrison, Joni Mitchell…. Diamanda Galas and Joel Peter Witkink…. many, much more… the laughter of my friends, the noises of the street, my beloved cats, the winter sea and mountain lakes.

…and of course the tarot cards….I have been studying, reading and painting tarot cards since I was a boy….I love them and I can’t stop studying them, contemplating them, collecting them. For the International Tarot Museum I have created 5 tarot decks and in these days I will start the sixth.
I hope and want to continue to create and be free as I am today

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Art by Suzzan Blac: Inside Out

To present a well-rounded viewpoint, it’s crucial for me to feature a female artist who actively advocates for the well-being of both children and adults. I am describing someone who fights tirelessly against child exploitation and human trafficking. It is necessary to mention that there are painful sexual encounters. The focus of this article is not on fantasy, but on deep contemplation of the harsh realities surrounding sexual assault. It describes the experience of one artist who overcame incredible odds and survived.

Suzzan Blac was born in Birmingham, UK in 1960. Her oil paintings and writing reflect her personal experiences with physical, mental, and sexual abuse. Blac’s artistic purpose is to shake society out of apathy and educate those who perpetrate secondary victimization, which can be equally distressing as the abuse. Suzzan’s work serves as a source of inspiration in group therapy for victims of abuse. Her work revolves around creating educational programs that encourage greater understanding.

Blac turned to painting between 2000 and 2004 to process her pain, anger, and trauma from the abuse she experienced. In order to tap into her subconscious, she started by doodling while watching TV, recognizing that these drawings had to originate from a place deep within herself rather than her conscious thoughts. After creating the drawings, she skillfully transformed them into realistic paintings that depicted both the victim and the perpetrators. Despite feeling unsettled by her paintings, she understood that they honestly portrayed her innermost pain that required healing. For four years, she dedicated herself to painting forty images, which she carefully kept hidden for over a decade, fully aware that sharing them would cause harsh judgment. It was in 2011 when she made the bold decision to share her most challenging work with the world by putting it online. Blac found it necessary to use her artistic abilities as a platform for speaking out and advocating for her beliefs. There were many people who said hurtful things to her. However, she also received gratitude from countless survivors who felt empowered to speak up because of her.

Blac’s work is challenging to look at. It invites the viewer to contemplate and empathize with situations involving sexual violence as a victim. In her own description, she compares rape to a type of murder in which the victim does not lose their life. Blac renders and illustrates emotions in a horrific way. She blends figuration with an eerie, surreal style. In her painting, she frequently uses an effect where the figures appear malleable under the influence of a predatory force. Dolls are frequently used to represent figures. The combination of these elements makes a significant and lingering impression on anyone who sees them. Her paintings hold viewers hostage and give them an intimate feeling of her experience.

The scenes in Blac’s work are terrifying, creating the ultimate experience of body horror and disassociation. Her artwork also serves as a healing remedy for emotional trauma, as well as a catalyst for memories of sexual abuse survivors. One could hypothesize that Blac’s neuroaesthetics might have an influence on the hippocampus, the area of the brain that plays a crucial role in managing the experiencing self and the remembering self.

Before reading her book, The Rebirth of Suzzan Blac, I was familiar with Suzzan’s remarkable talent for painting, but unaware of her story. I won’t reveal too much about the book, but I can give you a general concept. Blac was a prisoner, enduring unimaginable exploitation in the sex trade. These events occurred when she was still a teenager. The book is candid, and Blac’s narrative has a genuine and tender tone. Although the subject was difficult, the book had a natural and easy-to-read style that leads the reader into a world filled with the most cruel human conditions one can imagine. Blac’s book is incredibly uplifting and positive. Her dedication to addressing sexual abuse issues is evident in her continuous efforts to use art as a medium for awareness.

Written by Mitchell Pluto