Theory and Context - One

Andre Breton – Manifesto of Surrealism 1924

'The mere word "freedom" is the only one that still excites me. I deem it capable of indefinitely sustaining the old human fanaticism . . . Imagination alone offers me some intimation of what can be, and this is enough to remove to some slight degree the terrible injunction…'

'I believe in the future resolution of these two states, dream and reality, which are seemingly so contradictory, into a kind of absolute reality, a surreality, if one may so speak.'

'SURREALISM, n. Pure psychic automatism, by which it is intended to express, verbally, in writing, or by other means, the real process of thought. Thought's dictation, in the absence of all control exercised by the reason and outside all aesthetic or moral preoccupations.'

Despite not having a clear connection with surrealism and freedom, my current practice and those before it has been influenced by it. Agreeing with Breton, the writer of the first Surrealist Manifesto, imagination is the key to the infinite. Everything I draw, I attempt to avoid using a physical literal likeness. For example, my original leaf design, I did not take a leaf and draw it, I took an image of a leaf from my imagination.