This Artist Turns Second Life Screenshots Into Powerful Pop Expressionist Surrealist Images

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

Natalia Seranade may begin with a Second Life screenshot but she ends up closer to Pop Expressionist Surrealism, a modern art form sometimes called Lowbrow. (Eric Drummond Smith wrote a primer on the form here.) One of the essential elements he discusses struck me as most closely describing Natalia’s work: “Emotion, improvisation, and immediacy are central ends and means of our work.” When you look at “Plenitude” (above) isn’t your first reaction emotional? A reaction based in part on her color story. Red, black, and white, such visceral colors.

For works that are more explicitly pop and pop art, click here:

Natalia Seranade has a second photostream. Here her work is less expressionist and more pop, but often just as surreal. “Pic3” is pure pop art, using one of the many editing filters that make pen and ink drawings of a photograph. She may have even added some elements with a pen tool, but the transformation is complete from screenshot to pop part.

“Guilty” depicts a woman wading in a sea of guilt with the words “I’m sorry” in several languages. It seems so on-point in this decade of #MeToo and the common experience of women feeling guilty for what others have done to them. Erica Jong once said, “Show me a woman who doesn’t feel guilty and I’ll show you a man.” I think Natalia’s picture is a perfect illustration of a worldwide phenomenon of female guilt for being female. 

I love Natalia Seranade’s work and could spend days looking at her great pics on her two accounts, the more surreal [click here] and the one she calls “simple pictures” [click here.] Her work reminds me a bit of Thomas Mainardi, a contemporary French artist though she is much more of a surrealist than he is. For me, the most exciting thing about SL art is when someone takes a screenshot and turns it into something completely different, something less real. 

She has an exhibition that opened yesterday. For more information about that exhibit plus another of past works, check out this announcement in her photostream. 

See all of Cajsa's Choices here. Follow Cajsa on Flickr, on Twitter, on her blog, and on her Ko-Fi.

Comments

[Natalia Seranade]

Thank you very much for the review.