“Truth Or Dare - The Currency of Ganesh”
Made 2018

Transforming beings, ideas and imagery, now mostly associated with the mystical past and potential future into a current expression and visual reality are where the rubber hits the road for me. Ganesh is widely revered as the remover of obstacles, the patron of arts and sciences and the higher being of intellect and wisdom. In this piece, Lord Ganesh and his entourage have assimilated cryptocurrency symbols and blockchain code alongside traditional wealth displays. Gold, platinum, and diamonds hold a ‘taken for granted’ space in our awareness but for example, the smart contracts layered on top of Ethereum are building the wealth of today and tomorrow. 

This piece is technically the most challenging one I’ve done with around a 2000 layers merged into an image but as usual, with concept images like this, the real thing was to get the whole thing truthfully aligned with tradition ranging over thousands of years to something no one can really accurately depict. Once you get far enough into our past and in many cases not even to the distant future - the lines begin to blur to incredible voodoo. One way of looking at this might be to simplify it to holistic respect. HIgh abstraction usually has immense power or is considered a total hoax - depending on the individual assessing it.

The mouse symbolises the demonic ego within having been transformed into a servant and not the master. This is why the elephant is afraid of the mouse. No matter how small a resentful idea can be within, to begin with, untamed it can bring down the whole being.

This is what the Large Fabric option looks like in real life. In this space it is backlit due to the windows behind, but the color is even.

Charlie Lee, the founder of Litecoin, checked out the re-paint version of the piece at World Crypto Con in 2018 in Las Vegas.

Collect options:

1. Signed limited to 50 edition canvas prints. Ships with a frame in Finland, rolled up internationally.

2. Large Fabric means a large size signed print on fabric. They come with an authenticity certificate eternalised on the Bitcoin Blockchain via Verisart.
Limited to 6 only.

3. Re-paint limited to an edition means a large canvas print that is made unique with acrylic paint on top.
They come with an authenticity certificate eternalised on the Bitcoin Blockchain via Verisart.
Limited to 3 only.

4. Digital Original NFT + Unique Diasec Metallic Emulsion Print
Works with Augmented reality app Artivive
Limited to 1 only.

Physical prints verified via Verisart on the BTC chain.
NFT’s can be negotiated but usually on ETH blockchain.

All crypto purchases get a 5% discount.

Early experiment VR version in 2019