The Great Subway Gallery in the Sky

 synthograph  &  text    by     shaun lawton 

      Entering 2023 might as well be compared to  having virtually manifested in a surrealist gallery like I've finally coalesced into a sort of fully materialized being... and then when I woke up in the morning after a restful sleep, having only tossed about for a more comfortable position with my pillow arrangement a couple of times during the night, I felt a calling begin in the core of my gut. In doubled over remembrance, I seemed to recall that the walls of the museum seemed to be sky blue.  I felt like I was suddenly standing behind a cathedral window, dreaming of you. The light streaming in was tinged copper and gold from the radiance of the sunset outside. The gallery I was in was designed to appear as if it were the inside of a gigantic subway car. Lights passed by in consecutive flashes in between lapses of darkness all the while flickering with pale illumination across the interior of the gallery room.  Revealed in lurid flashes of strobe lit development, it created the illusion we were in the frames of a disintegrating movie, in between flashes of lightning that seemingly turned into flames which then resembled tongues reaching out into fallen leaves that drifted to the gallery floor, grasping for purchase which never came as they sank beneath the surface as if into a tar pit. Upon the flattened glossy reflective marble  the flames fanned in the distance like slowly rippling leaves, in development like bad weather lining the edges of the trees as the forest receded into the misty haze under blue gray skies vanishing into nothingness while white clouds began to darken on the horizon.