4 Strange Beings

4 Strange Beings | Art Statement

4 Strange Beings is a digital video artwork presenting four brief portrait studies that emerged from a vivid lucid-dream encounter during a period of heightened inner awareness. Each being appeared as a luminous, fractal, shifting form, neither physical nor symbolic, but expressions of an intelligent presence beyond familiar structures of identity or gender.

The work reflects a two-year process of collaborating with AI to translate these fleeting impressions into visual form. Rather than pursuing a stylistic signature, the aim was to honor the essence of the encounter and explore how art can bridge subtle states of consciousness.

These portraits invite the viewer to reflect on the mysterious dimensions of perception and the possibility of intelligences that exist outside ordinary experience. The piece is a meditation on the unknown, a glimpse into the vast terrain of inner worlds.

4 Portraits:

4 Strange Beings

What can I say? This one is unusual, even for me. As I move deeper into a writing phase of my life, storytelling has become a natural extension of my art. It feels like a return, but also an evolution. Writing has always been a ritual in my creative journey. For years my 1940s Smith Corona typewriter was my companion, especially through the wild poetry days of the 90s and early 2000s. That typewriter demanded presence, its rhythm was like riding my vintage Harley chopper, tactile, meditative, honest.

Back then I wrote from raw energy. Words were invented on the spot, born from feeling rather than structure, free of grammar or rules. The writing and drawing blended into one stream of expression. Those pieces are all archived somewhere, and I am grateful for them. But today, the way I write has shifted. I still write from the heart, without judgment, fingers flying as fast as the feeling moves, but now there is clarity. I use the computer. I let technology help organize the language so that the story can be received. The essence remains mine; the structure simply makes it shareable.

Why do I begin here? Because this context matters for what comes next.

This artwork is a series of four portraits, representations of four beings I encountered. Not imagined. Not crafted from fantasy. But emerging from the lifelong path of exploration I’ve walked. My early adventures took me across sacred sites in India, Egypt, the Middle East, Europe, Eastern Europe, journeys filled with unforgettable experiences. Yet these four beings did not arrive through outer travel. They came from the inner worlds.

In modern times, many speak of encountering strange beings through psychedelics, mushrooms, acid, DMT. I understand these accounts. I have my own experiences with such medicines, and many shamans refuse the word “hallucination” because it diminishes the truth of the formless realms. But this encounter was not born from chemicals or altered states induced by plants. It came from years of inner work, cultivating perception without relying on substances, opening the gates of awareness from within.

When you train your inner system to open naturally, the experiences become cleaner, clearer, without the side effects or distortions of medicine. Some of the most profound journeys of my life have arisen from this path, states of love and energy so pure they felt like the entire universe was flowing through me. Alive, awake, limitless.

It was during such a phase of inner expansion that it happened.

I had already sensed fairies and beings before, especially during Luna’s early years, when her presence seemed to draw them to us. They filled our home and garden like guardians. My grandmother, Medzmama, often communicated through synchronicities rather than form. But this encounter, these four beings, was different. Brief, powerful, unforgettable. Each portrait you see is around sixteen seconds long because that is how long the moment, as best as I can recall, lasted.

For months I had been having dense, unusual dreams, the kind that linger. If I hadn’t learned lucid dreaming techniques back in the 90s, I doubt I would remember any of this. Perhaps these beings didn’t expect me to. But for whatever reason, this one stayed.

I shared pieces of other recent experiences with Jude and a few close friends, but not this. Until now, I had no language for it. And without AI, I would never have been able to visually render them. These works are not expressions of an artistic style, they are attempts to portray what I saw. For two years, I trained my AI assistant and myself to collaborate, to form a relationship of creative understanding. Together, we shaped the closest representation I could manifest.

The encounter itself…

They were magnificent, like wise elders from another dimension. Their energy carried no sense of gender. In their presence, I realized how deeply human culture is conditioned around gender, how irrelevant it felt in their world. Their forms were luminous, shifting, almost fractal, alive like bioluminescent currents flowing in the dark. Not light bodies, not solid bodies, but something between. Eyes without “eyes,” perception without form. Nothing I had ever seen in art or film came close.

This all occurred around the time of the i3 Atlas comet phenomenon. Are they connected? I don’t know. But something about their presence felt cosmic, heart-centered, benevolent, ancient. Though visually strange, they emanated such calm intelligence that there was no fear. They carried the feeling of beings who held a library of the cosmos within their consciousness.

I don’t know their names or origins. Perhaps someone out there might recognize them, I am not well-versed in alien classifications or channeled species. That’s never been my focus. My path has always been inward: open-minded, non-judgmental, curious. A lifelong practice of softening perception.

And maybe that openness is what allowed me to see them.

What I remember most is the way they connected, not through words, but through the heart. There was a direct transmission, a nonverbal knowing. They reminded me that the heart is the key. The key and the door. And that sincerity, authenticity, is what opens it. They told me this is love, this is truth, and to continue.

When our brief meeting ended, we bowed to one another, an acknowledgment soul to soul. In that final moment, they revealed something that brought tears to my eyes: that at the deepest level of existence, we were the same. Expressions of the same source, the same essence. I was them, and they were me.

And then I woke up.

I carry this encounter with reverence.

These four strange beings touched me, even in such a short time.

This artwork is my attempt, perhaps my only possible attempt, to honor that moment.