Prozac Garden

No distance, no perspective. Just as in traditional story telling, the narrator's presence reminds us of the privilege of distance, the gap between teller and the tale that gives him a free pass to all levels, times, and characters. In painting, perspective appeared at the same time as the basis of the individual in the renaissance. The artist, no longer the instrument of God, could put his name to the masterpiece. The individual point of view had arrived.

In Prozac Garden, we see a classic three quarter profile, reminiscent of a portrait from the Dutch golden age, but the landscape behind seems to have blended with the man in the tree hat in one single layer. The lack of distance seems to be the subject, not the person.

The Prozac Garden project started as a book called The Art Of Feeling Blue, in whose narrative the main character suffers depression and wallows in his feelings, lacking perspective:

"He was diagnosed as depressive and took Prozac. He knew that depression comes after euphoria, and that Prozac would make these extremes less frequent. During this time, the buildings of the city symbolized his euphoric moments, the pools his depressions and the gardens areas of emotional stability. He imagined that the medicine produced an invisible garden on his head which he named Prozac Garden."

(Fragment from The Art of Feeling Blue.)