Aidan Flakne

Throughout my life, I have often found art as a way to express my thoughts and feelings where words fail me. I am a terrible speaker, often fumbling my words and losing my train of thought the moment I start talking for extended periods of time, so I often turn to visual art as a way of conveying my emotions without having to rely on my tongue. This idea is echoed in my artistic style as well. I use surrealism to take my real emotions and self and alter them in a manner that creates a metaphorical connection to the meaning behind my pieces. In many of my earlier works, I also used realism to depict life as it is, however I found it to be too constricting and devoid of the meaning I wished to infuse into my artwork. 

Due to my surrealist style, it probably isn’t hard to believe that one artist I take a lot of inspiration from is Salvador Dalí. I find his dreamlike landscapes and illogical subjects to be fascinating. In the future, I hope to infuse more of Dalí’s characteristic bending and altering of common objects into my paintings as well. 

Besides Dalí and my emotions, I am inspired by many things. People wish to retrieve a clear-cut answer about inspiration, but the fact is that we as a species are inspired by every bit of media we absorb, whether it be through a book, tv show, advertisement, video game or social media. I have been inspired by so many things, from so many places that I often lose track, and in the end my art is the result of my entire life’s worth of information I have internalized.