Peter Dean Rickards

Artist Statement

Fantasy is defined as unrealistic mental images on which one repeatedly dwells, that reflect one’s conscious or unconscious desires. These images do not always stay as thoughts in the mind but often manifest into physical objects/pictures, actions, words or behaviors. I think about how fantasy can manifest and how the reality of an individual may be pushed or bent.

I compare the mundane experiences of my characters and their fantasies or fantastical interactions with other beings. One deals with desire and unobtainable ideals and another takes various shapes of things observed in a continuous search for the ultimate identity.

The landscape becomes my dreamscape and the birthplace and playground of the characters. It is the silent undercurrent dictating what happens to them; where they are lead and what they see.

It is mostly devoid of any construction, nesting or mass amounts of beings that would suggest inhabitation. The vastness of these landscapes emphasizes their isolation when the occasional figure/ character interrupts “these empty” spaces

The land also becomes metaphor for perception. I use it as a battleground for what is supposedly fantasy and reality for my characters. I illustrate an individual’s helplessness to see a given situation through the skewed or tainted lens of past experiences or fantasy. Encounters will always be constructed and distorted. Seeing the objective reality of a thing is impossible.