Quantcast
Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 185

This Is Your Brain On Drugs

In 1995, artist Bryan Lewis Saunders decided he would paint a self-portrait every single day for the rest of his life. He’s up to about 10,000 so far – and more than 50 of them are based on different drug experiences. The results are fascinating, and sometimes beautiful. The Guardian said this:

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
photo credit: Troy Stains for the Guardian

photo credit: Troy Stains/Guardian

Bryan is an artist. For the past 17 years he’s been sitting in this room – or somewhere like it – drawing a self-portrait or two every day. “I’ve done 8,700,” he says. “Every day is different. Like snowflakes and DNA and fingerprints, no two are the same.”

The thing is, 50 of these 8,700 self-portraits have lately become very famous – celebrated all over the world, with millions of Google hits and a forthcoming exhibition alongside Damien Hirst at the influential Maison Rouge gallery in Paris. They’re the 50 he drew while he was on drugs. Each was created under the influence of a different substance, from marijuana and cocaine through lighter fluid and “bath salts” – “They’re what everybody says are causing people to eat each other’s faces” – to prescription pills with names like Cephalexin and Risperdal. In fact, most of the 50 were prescription pharmaceuticals. “That’s the popular thing today,” Bryan says. He says he hates drugs but feels obliged to try new ones, “just for the drawing”

The exhibition at Paris’ Maison Rouge took place last year. He also recent had an exhibition of his work in Washington, DC, at the Catalyst Projects gallery.

From Alternet:

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
photo credit: Sean Carnage

photo credit: Sean Carnage

Bryan Lewis Saunders likes to take drugs, both legal and illegal, and then draw pictures of himself. The results are strikingly different from drug to drug, and they vary from beautiful to grotesque, abstract and just plain bizarre.

An artist in his mid-40s from Virginia, now living in Tennessee, Saunders has completed more than 9,930 self-portraits to date (though not all under the influence of a drug).

He said he explored tragedy and social problems for a couple years, then switched to exploring sleep, pain and personality assessment—then drugs. He’s most interested in the “things that are still a mystery to us all,” he said in an email.

In 2012 Saunders told Wired magazine he’d decided to do a self-portrait every day for the rest of his life so that he “could die knowing that I tried to experience as much as possible when I was alive.”

“All day every day, images and feelings of the world come into me and it’s inescapable,” he wrote to Wired. “So I thought if I did a self-portrait every day for the rest of my life, with no rules, the world and I could be more linked to my nervous system.”

On his website, in an explanation of the “Drugs” portraits, Saunders writes:

“After experiencing drastic changes in my environment, I looked for other experiences that might profoundly affect my perception of self.”

He devised an experiment in which every day he took a different drug and drew himself under the influence.

“Within weeks I became lethargic and suffered mild brain damage. I am still conducting this experiment but over greater lapses of time. I only take drugs that are given to me.”

Saunders said in an email that, lately it’s rare that he creates a new “drugs” portrait.

“I don’t like all of these synthetic [drugs] they keep creating,” he said. “It is rare that I’m offered something new to me nowadays.”

From Fastcocreate.com:

“Self-portraiture is biased in its very nature,” says Saunders. “The more informed the bias the more interesting the image is, usually. Memories, thoughts, feelings, beliefs, behaviors are all but impossible to separate from the making of a self-portrait. If I was to attempt to render the same exact image on each different substance in essence denying what the drug means to me personally, the only thing I would be expressing were the degrees in which my motor skills, or visual processes were effected thus entirely undermining the purpose of doing a self-portrait in the first place.”

Here are 51 drug-fuelled paintings from his series Self Portraits Under the Influence of Love and Other Drugs

 

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
 photo 6da4979a-315b-4a47-a353-8ca94dc837b6.jpg

25I-NBOMe

.

 

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
 photo f76d5cbe-6b41-41c1-abec-257881f39c40.jpg

Abilify / Xanax / Ativan (dosage unknown in hospital)

.

 

 

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Photobucket

90mg Abilify (after 3 months usage 3x maximum dose)

.

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

1 sm Glass of “real” Absinth (not the fake crap)

.

 

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

10mg Adderall

.

 

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

10mg Ambien

.

 

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Photobucket

Bath Salts

.

 

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

15mg Buspar (snorted)

.

 

 

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

4 Butalbitals (doseage unknown)

.

 

 

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Photobucket

Butane Honey Oil

.

 

 

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Photobucket

250mg Cephalexin (painted w/ watercolor pencil, water and cephalexin)

.

 

 

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

1/2 gram Cocaine

.

 

 

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Photobucket

Computer Duster (2 squirts)

.

 

 

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

2 bottles of Cough Syrup

.

 

 

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

1 “Bump” of Crystalmeth

.

 

 

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Photobucket

4mg Dilaudid

.

 

 

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

1 shot of Dilaudid / 3 shots of Morphine (In the ER with kidney stones)

.

 

 

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Photobucket

DMT (during and after)

.

 

 

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Photobucket

60mg Geodon

.

 

 

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Photobucket

Hash

.

 

 

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
 photo 3db6eebc-cac3-46f7-b48c-e6d0ae8a619f.jpg

Heroin (Snorted)

.

 

 

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Huffing Gas (during and right after)

.

 

 

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Huffing Lighter Fluid (during and right after)

.

 

 

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

7.5mg Hydrocodone / 7.5mg Oxycodone / 3mg Xanax

.

 

 

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Photobucket

3mg Klonopin

.

 

 

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

10mg Lortab

.

 

 

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Marijuana (Kine Bud)

.

 

 

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Photobucket

G13 Marijuana

.

 

 

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Morphine IV (doseage unknown)

.

 

 

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Psilocybin Mushrooms (2 caps onset)

.

 

 

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Photobucket

2mg Nicotine Gum (after quitting smoking for 2 months)

.

 

 

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Nitrous Oxide

.

 

 

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Nitrous Oxide / Valium I.V. (doseage unknown in hospital)

.

 

 

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

PCP

.

 

 

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

7.5mg Percocet

.

 

 

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

2 Pot Brownies

.

 

 

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Photobucket

1 Glass of Pruno

.

 

 

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Marijuana Resin

.

 

 

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Photobucket

4mg Risperdol

.

 

 

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Ritilin (doseage unknown-snorted)

.

 

 

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Salvia Divinorum (right before but mostly right after)

.

 

 

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

100mg Seroquel

.

 

 

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
 photo 07d15e21-0a38-4f31-a0d9-5283b5a436c7.jpg

100mg Tramadol

.

 

 

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Photobucket

100mg Trazadone

.

 

 

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

20mg Valium

.

 

 

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Valium I.V. (doseage unknown in hospital)

.

 

 

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Photobucket

Valium IV, (Albuterol, Saline & Oxygen mixture)

.

 

 

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

2mg Xanax

.

 

 

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

50mg Zoloft (after 2 weeks)

.

 

 

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Photobucket

10mg Zyprexa (after 2 weeks in hospital)

.

 

 

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Ativan / Haloperidol (doseage unknown in hospital)

 


Filed under: Art Tagged: 2012, 2013, 2014, alternatives, art, arts, drugs, press Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 185

Trending Articles