19:52

Time is irrelevant when it is the holidays. My body now pays no attention to day and night and my sleeping hours are 5 a.m. to 2 p.m. I like it.

A few weeks ago I stumbled upon an artist named Mark Ryden's website. He does these really cute but terribly morbid and unnerving surrealist paintings. They scare me a lot. I like that. I also find his repetitive symbols quite interesting. You'll find Abraham Lincoln in lots of his paintings, as well as meat, Jesus and this one bee. I love his subjects. They are more often than not children, but they don't have a lot of that joyful, naive innocence you usually find in kids. Sometimes they look like they're in a slight trance to me. They have this vacant look (that's really quite creepy) that when paired with strange, grotesque situations, makes me very uncomfortable. A lot of the girls also have this very adult sensuality. It's like these children have known sorrow and emptiness and love and lust and sex and brutality and death... and they like it. Or are fascinated by it, rather. It's quite interesting. His Snow Yak show, though, feels a lot less.. dangerous? It still makes you feel weird inside, but there is a serenity in the mostly white colour palette that soothes that ickiness away and you feel a bit more peaceful. A bit. I also love the baby named Jajo that he's painted quite a few times. But all this weirdness does not mean that his works are not nice to look at, because they are. That's the problem. They're so pretty and cute and make you want to look at them, but it's really just a trap. Because after that you can't get it out of your head.

Fetal Trapping in Northern Carolina from 'The Tree Show' series

The Cloven Bunny from the 'Blood' series
(The blood clots are lovely)

Fur Girl from 'The Snow Yak Show' series

The Grinder (#95) from 'The Gay '90s Show' series

Little Boy Blue from the 'Bunnies & Bees' series
(This feels so sinister)
(I'd love to hang this on the wall directly in front of my bed and wake up to it every morning)

All pictures from Mark Ryden's website. I would really love to see his work in real life, with their ornately hand-carved frames and everything *-*