@phantasmicoracle

Instagram: @phantasmicoracle Facebook: www.facebook.com/dan.byrd2 Ello: www.ello.co/phantasmicoracle DeviantArt: phantasmicoracle.deviantart.com

1. What's your story? Where are you from?

I live in the mid-western United States. Equally south of Chicago as north of St. Louis. My environments are alternating fields of corn and beans in an expanse of long flat farmlands that give way to endless horizons and unobstructed sunrises and sunsets. I have always been a creative person, but it wasn't until 2017 that I decided to apply my creativity entirely to the visual arts.

2. Tell us about your aesthetic.

The landscapes and colors of my dreams, symbols and archetypes and the unique psychological makeup of those that let the images resonate with them collide and collaborate, I hope, to form the complete aesthetic. While I reprise the roles of places, objects and things across several works, this is more the result of improvisation across time than any intended narrative. But as my body of work grows, Im often surprised by unintended continuity and an emergent mythos that declare, by this virtue, that they have created themselves. I thrive on perceptions voiced by those that are affected by my art . Its these reactions and my own journey that inform every new effort.

3. What is your favourite medium and why?

The origins of my current artistic journey began with the drawing tools that come with Microsoft Excel. They are surprisingly powerful and allow for a great deal of artistic flexibility. A spreadsheet application would seem that it should be limited in its ability to allow for complete artistic expression, but I found this to not be the case. I would discover later that the drawing tools incumbent in Excel were very much like the vector tools leveraged by CorelDRAW and Adobe Illustrator. CorelDRAW turned out to be my lasting partner as it lends itself perfectly to my creative whim.

4. What is your artistic process like?

It is almost always a contemplative meditation where the intent I begin with transforms into something else entirely. I work toward richer expressions in ideas or perspective or both with every piece, but above all it is experience, and preferably new experience, outside of the creative process that fuels the process itself.

5. Who and/or what inspires your work?

The notions and feelings that arise from discovering some new principle I never had considered before in the fields of philosophy, psychology and other studies make up my internal library of inspirations. Usually these are thought experiments. Im not even aware I am performing either as I am meditating on my own work or that of others. Its always the alchemical marriage of my internal processes and external stimuli that form a typically unique expression removed from the source inspiration by the twists and turns it travels in my head.

6. What role does art play in your life? How does it change the way you view the world?

I believe the best art, music and film should make you think. Whether its uncomfortable or sublime, I measure its value on whether or not it interrupts my thoughts when I am not actively engaged with it. Great art augments the way I think in unexpected and mostly indescribable ways.

7. Where did you study?

I am self taught.

8. Where do you see yourself in five years?

Id love to work collaboratively with like minds on a labor of love. Whoever and whatever that is, I'll know it when I find it.

9. What about in ten?

Animation seems like a logical, but challenging next step. Ten years seems like enough wiggle room to see that through.

10. What do you hope to achieve with your art?

I want for it to excite the mental processes of its audience. I dont want it to tell anyone what to think, but I want it to affect the way they think.

11. Now, tell us a little more about you as a person: what is your favourite food?

Anything spicy. I love the flavor of a ghost pepper.

12. Favourite book?

Beelzebub's Tales To His Grandson by G.I. Gurdjieff.

13. Favourite genre of music?

Im currently very much into psych of any flavor, but I believe every genre is worth exploring. I've yet to find one where I was unable to discover something someone was doing that resonated with me.

14. What are your hobbies?

Seeking out new perspectives and giving them life on a screen.

15. If you weren't an artist, what would you be?

Unhappy.