The Eternal Sleep

• Mixed media; Pencil sketch with acrylic, watercolour and original prose. 

The inspiration for this sketch has its roots in traditional poppy symbolism;

• war and death
• opium and a sleep-like state. 

I've adopted these themes and ran them parallel with one another other in order to explain a journey towards a more subconscious, higher level of existence that we should be striving for. A transcendence past our mundane society (complete with their wars, mass industry, cities, pollution and corruption), to a more spiritual, purer level of existence which can be attained via the transition of death, or a more dreamlike, meditative state, and hallucinogens, i guess! Basically, it's about the desire to attain that next level; the spirit over the everyday. 

But in trying to explain this, I struggled against the truth that we're currently trapped in this everyday default world. We're immersed in it's corruption, pollution and daily routine. This is the struggle. Against the overwhelming bombardment of dirty, dusty war-zones, consumerism, media propaganda, roadsides, cities and industries. Society. All of it. All the colours are muted, everything diluted and washed out. Beautiful flowers are portrayed as weeds.  The poppy is symbolic of this struggle to attain a higher, purer, spiritual level of existence of which we should be reaching for.