Vicarious

Vicarious is human emotion, living as we want to live, stretching outward and upward, as flames rise

 

Experience through another: Vicarious is the passion of a human heart and all emotions consolidated to a single form. He is layered as human beings are layered in their experiences, their dreams and their emotions. His form stretches outward and upward, as flames rise, expanding higher. His neutral mask both conceals and reveals the inner flame as the centre of the fire reaches its apex.

 

Vicarious began as a king. Like most of my art, I wrote a very long and intricate backstory for him. I see the backstory as boundaries that I set and the art works within those boundaries. This consolidates the emotion and perspective I want to pour into it, much like air inflating a balloon rather than lost to entropy, going in directions I didn't intend.

 

With Vicarious, however, he evolved into something beyond an exiled king and into a symbol. While he still retained the regality of a king, that regality was inverted to symbolise something every human being wants to be and experiences through another. Not literally, but rather the distillation of the desires, the outward nobility and ambition of raw emotion. The colour red lends a vitality that feels like the outer shell was stripped away to reveal the blood of life with no pretence. Vicarious is a form of truth in every human being.

 

The layered scales lend an organic feel to the form, much like a pinecone, and serve to armour the person within. The shape symbolises the feeling of growth, like flames catching and growing. The headpiece has no expression and a no sex. Vicarious is you and me, our humanity, our emotion, and our experience.