Celestial Crystals

After years of self-portraiture, I wanted to look beyond my own image. Celestial Crystals opened that movement outward.

The series placed luminous crystals within imagined cosmic landscapes. Neon colour, deep space and a vaporwave sensibility offered a different visual language from the performed identities of earlier projects.

Where the self-portraits had examined my relationship with the digital world, these images asked how an artwork might hold wonder, spiritual symbolism and the possibility of another kind of future.

Symbols in an imagined cosmos

I drew on the lore surrounding gemstones: the associations of amethyst with calm, rose quartz with love, and citrine with abundance. These meanings became artistic material.

Within the images, a crystal could appear as a talisman or a luminous object suspended between the earthly and the cosmic. The work invited contemplation through colour, scale and atmosphere.

Its language of healing belonged to this symbolic exploration. I was making images through which to consider care, connection and hope, rather than demonstrating medical effects.

The bright palette was part of the intention. Against a dark expanse, neon could feel warm and inviting. The retro-futuristic aesthetic recalled the possibility that technology might still offer delight.

Intention and technology

Working with AI introduced another relationship into the series. My intentions guided a process in which the machine helped generate the visual world.

That collaboration did not settle every question about the technology. It opened a space in which I could explore its possibilities while remaining attentive to the ethical questions that would become increasingly important in my practice.

The series also grew from frustration with the digital platforms on which artists depend. In the book, I describe a period when the energy required to maintain visibility was competing with the energy available to make work.

Celestial Crystals gave me another direction. Rather than making the platform itself the centre of every response, I could imagine a world beyond its immediate demands.

The images became a bridge between earlier self-portraiture and a growing interest in guided visual journeys. They suggested that imagination could be offered as a space for someone else to enter.

For me, wonder was not a withdrawal from creative responsibility. It was something I wanted the work to preserve: the capacity to encounter an image and feel that another possibility could still be imagined.