Thank you for visiting Arley Blankenship Fine Art.  While pieces of my collection are somewhat traditional, most are what I call contemporary surrealism.

WHY CONTEMPORARY SURREALISM?

At the beginning of the 20th century, the early Surrealists found a rich source of visual imagery in Freudian psychoanalysis, and it's "dream state".

I have always admired their representational classic technique, but do not subscribe to their aesthetic philosophy.  All that we have learned about human perception, power of mind and the nature of hallucination requires a less constricted approach.  Rather than encrypting meaning within symbolic relationships between objects and their environment, I attempt to make meaning itself cryptic and non-specific.  Landscapes and environments depict both beauty and  desolation at the same time.  Laws of Physics are adhered to and suspended simultaneously.

Objects that occupy these environments are preposterously out of place and demand to have their meaning interpreted.  I aim to deny the viewer any specific interpretation.  Thus, while an image may be beautiful and compelling to one person, it can be disturbing and uncomfortable to another.  The individual viewer becomes the final arbitrator of meaning and symbolism and so becomes as much an integral part of the creative process as the painter himself.

Arley Blankenship