Bite of Air

What exactly is innocence? My intuition about the meaning of the word tells me that it might be pre-cognitive, pre-calculation, without plan, from the heart. So for instance, contrary to how some might see it, sex to me seems like it could be an innocent thing. Maybe “vulnerable” would be a better term sometimes. Unmitigated expression, not justified or transformed, direct, honest, immediate. Independently of these attempts, a textbook synonym for Innocence is Purity. Freedom from Corruption.

Maybe some of these thoughts were also on Toothy’s mind when he commissioned me for an image that would show this ideal that his character represents. Specifically, the moment at which it is obtained. And not only obtained, but fought for - he wanted to see his character breaking free, getting rid of all constraints.

In the Tarot, the Fool is Innocence. It is also among the most abstract ideas in the deck — as if to say that the whole universe is a joke, albeit one we might not be getting. He is related to Dionysus through the idea of Frenzy, he is the Breath before the Word, Aleph, Silence, the First Motion, and so much more. Adequately representing the Fool itself was daunting to me, as I’m simply not experienced enough.

Instead I focused on the idea that all manifestation is part of the whole. Flaws, desires, apparent constraints are not evil but exist to be looked at, integrated, sublimated. This led me to the decision to generalise the extremes of existence. Opposing forces that bounce and spin. The fury one might employ in trying to balance and reach above it could be seen as warrior-like, a march.

Such considerations led to my decision to emphasise the motion of the manifest below by means of diagonals and energetic colours, contrasting with the stillness of the black and white unmanifest that is symmetrical.

Geometry was my choice of visual representation of whatever is “created” or manifest. I chose the Dodecahedron to “imprison” Toothy, and it is breaking apart as he frees himself from his “mundane shell.” The 12-sided solid is a special one that refers to the heavens. (Can’t wait to read Plato.) To spice it up with a hint to Fourdimensionalism, I added those purple lines that go inside it. The colour itself was chosen as a complementary to the light, vital and energetic green (taken from the Fool of my deck) as well as the darker and more contemplative chords of teal and aquamarine. The Wikipedia Article of the 120-Cell, a figure based on the Dodecahedron, is my source for this idea. In some 3-dimensional projections/models of this 4-polytope, as far as I could tell at a glance, these lines would come about as the pentagonal sides of the structure go “inside” and meet in a star-shape. Maybe this seemed so special to me that it deserved the special colour. Though honestly, I can’t say for sure if I even got that part remotely correct. I remember staring at all sorts of VHS-quality animations on YouTube for an hour and realizing that to research this properly would far exceed the scope of a sketch commission.

Lastly, the pose, in how the figure seems to be climbing and expanding, was very fun to figure out. Toothy indicated that he would associate aggression with violence, darkness and calculation, so I couldn’t make it look that way. The warrior-esque vibe could still come through in a really wide step and a dynamic gesture. The darkness of the limbs, in contrast to the brightness of the head, is not organised from bottom to top. This is because it just seemed wrong to me to do so. In the pose of the forelegs is some degree of pause. As the “breath” of the fool is inhaled and its energy radiates from his chest in green, it almost feels like the lungs or ribcage, like our mundane shell, are another vessel at the point of furthest expansion, or even bursting - I would here direct you to the word Thymos.

All in all an interesting project which I’m grateful to have been entrusted with. It directly confronted me with a core issue of visual art. Representative or not, all media presents a finite constellation to the mental reality that is eternally in flux. It’s never possible to step in the same river twice, yet that is kind of what making a picture feels like. That’s why I’d like to note that nothing I do is a claim to truth, but rather an imperfect and momentary snapshot of a blurry impression - it’d seem that to reach anything higher, we first need many different models and angles - similarly to approaching the four-dimensional. It’s in making these snapshots I recover and experience small hints of something bigger. Anyhow, esoteric ramble over and out. Thanks for reading! :)