If you want to interpret my drawings, don't dwell over any one drawing too much. Individually, they don't have much meaning. For the most part, they're just images that popped into my head while I was day dreaming or listening to music, and I thought it was cool or trippy enough to be worth drawing. There are some exceptions to this, of course, and where these exceptions show up, I made sure I explained what I had in mind in the little blurb below the picture.

Collectively, however, they express something very meaningful to me, and perhaps to no one else. The reason why these bizarre, psychedelic, and surreal images that seem to depict alternate worlds demand of me to catharsize them onto paper, is because I truly believe there are such alternate worlds. You might think of them as a testament to my beliefs. I am a firm believer that the world is perceptual in nature, and objectivity is only useful in the service of the greater (and multitudinous) subjective world - in other words, the objective world that we perceive is only one world out of an infinite universe of many. I am not a mystic or an occultist, and I don't believe in miracles, and therefore, I wouldn't venture to say that there is any magic or spell that can transport us to these other worlds (not necessarily). However, anyone who has experienced the psychedelic effect of drugs, believed in their dreams (while they were happening), held religious or spiritual beliefs counter to the mainstream convictions of society, or generally felt that they perceived the world differently, understand what it's like to "live in a different world". Of course, most people, finding the notion of more than one reality existing at the same time inconceivable, would only agree with this as a metaphor. I don't.

Furthermore, whereas some realities can be imagined without being believed in, this only represents a fraction of a percentage of the possible realities that exist in the greater subjective universe. The great majority of them are inconceivable as they are composed of non-human experiences. These worlds cannot be drawn, but in my artwork I try my best. My drawings, therefore, represent the closest approximations of these alternate worlds. I try to explain this with an analogy from computer science: when you try to open a file with an application that wasn't meant for it, such as an executable file being opened with Microsoft Word, you get garble appearing on the screen. Trying to make heads or tails of it, you cannot find any meaningful sentences or words in it. However, the file does mean something to the right application. Open it up in Excel, for instance, and you might find it makes perfect sense as a table of numbers or an inventory. Maybe it only makes sense to a program that reads it for its own purposes and displays nothing of it to the user. In this analogy, the file represents my drawings, and the application represents your mind. If my drawing was meant to be viewed by normal human beings*, it would be a depiction of something that makes sense, like a bowl of fruit or a serene landscape, and it would be perfectly meaningful to the viewers. But you can imagine that my drawings were meant to be viewed by beings other than humans (whatever they may be). Thus, when humans view it, they see nothing but nonsensical imagery (the garble that shows up in Word), but when these non-human viewers look at it, they see something very meaningful and easy to understand (like a bowl of fruit). Now, as I said, I don't believe we can travel to such exotic worlds, nor do I believe in these non-human beings (not necessarily), but I often speculate on what they would be like to visit. I imagine that if I were to travel to these worlds and visit its inhabitants, these drawings would be the photos I'd bring back to show everyone what I've seen.

You also may notice that some of my drawings are, at the very least, unpleasant, and at most, demonic. This is consistent with my belief in alternate worlds. I never said these other worlds were always heavenly and blissful; I only say that they're different. From a psychological stand point, I'd have to say that my yearning to add some demonicism into my drawings reflects the fact that fear will often accompany delving into the unknown. To know means to be familiar with, which in turn means to feel comfortable and in control. To venture into strange lands and not know what to expect can instill a great sense of insecurity, like a lost sheep walking through the woods at night with the everpresent sense of monstrous eyes watching it. I believe that, for human beings, our greatest defense mechanism is understanding. It is so fundamental to our sense of security and well-being that I would say it has a biologically hard-wired basis, and if I were to guess what the biological mechanism for it is, I'd say it was the left brain. The left brain is the hemisphere of our brain that applies rules and logic to our thoughts, approving only that which makes sense and is acceptable. Without the left brain, our right brain would be free to form ideas and beliefs without any regulations or limits, and we would have no control over what our minds come up with. Sometimes this would create the most wonderful of heavens, at other times the most terrifying of hells.

There's also the matter of the titles I give each section. These express more the events and feelings I was going through during the period these drawings were made. Very often, these periods and the drawings within them have nothing to do with each other. Nevertheless, I like to group my drawings according to these periods because the transitions from one period to another usually accompany a small burst of drawings - that is, a short period of a week or two where many drawings get done. This is because a lot of these transitions occur due to something ending causing a lot of time to free up, such as a school break or a vacation (like "Trip to Mexico"), in which case I have plenty of time to draw many of the drawings that have been building up in my mind up to this time. Also, note that the date markings of these drawings are approximately when I started drawing them, not necessarily when I finished them or when they were first conceived. They may have been conceived up to 6 months before I drew them, and may have been finished up to 6 months after I started. Therefore, there are several that may actually express something from a period before the one they are found in.

Well, that's it, how to interpret my drawings in a nut shell. Enjoy!

*Of course, these drawings are meant to be viewed by human beings.