From Van Gogh to Dalí, Duchamp to Warhol, art has always had the ability to alter perception to psychedelic proportions. An artwork can coax us to enter a world within the canvas, to see a different side of humanity, and look deeply within ourselves causing side effects, similar to smoking a joint or eating an edible, giving off feelings of elation, introspection, relaxation and creativity. Viewing art with the perfect strain of weed can push our perspective of art even further, allowing us to find elements in a work we might not have looked close enough to see before. Trippy Renaissance paintings with hidden messages, sensual collages that make intimacy come to life, photographs that look too fake to be real–here are five contemporary artists whose paintings, drawings and sculptures show us more than what meets the eye, and are perfect to explore while high.
Artist: Aurel Schmidt
Strain: Pineapple Express (Hybrid)
Illustrator Aurel Schmidt has a delicate hand and a tough attitude, combining an intricacy of detail with a bizarre sense of humor for a hilarious hybrid of images, perfect to enjoy with a Hybrid bud that makes senses and details pop. With her collection of works on paper, Schmidt transforms one inanimate object, like a pineapple or statue or beer can, into a sexual and emotional anthropomorphization you can’t help but want to know. Scroll through her sultry and detail oriented drawings that are just surreal enough to be in a midsummer night’s dream.
Artist: Christian Rex Van Minnen
Strain: Purple Haze (Sativa)
Imagination runs truly wild in Christian Rex Van Minnen dreamlike paintings inspired by Renaissance portraiture and still life, each with a psychedelic twist. From rainbow faces that seem to melt to skin-like flower arrangements bubbling with unexpected creatures and objects, Van Minnen hides messages, strange objects and beautifully grotesque details in each painting. Explore these secrets with a Purple Haze type Sativa strain, which heightens euphoria and encourages hallucinations, to really blur the line between reality and waking life and see where your imagination takes you.
From the Flatness series
Artist: Erin O' Keefe
Strain: Green Crack (Sativa)
Though these vibrant angular images may look like a product of precise painting techniques of shading and perspective, Erin O’Keefe skews perception with nothing but paper, lights and a camera. Her photographs of printed images and objects are made into sculpture, and as you look close, the real physicality shows through. These multi-layer images push cognition like you’re a kid staring at a Magic Eye book, and deserves a strain that is focused, invigorating and conceptual.
Crackle, 2013
Burnt, 2013
Artist: Sarah Anne Johnson
Strain: NYC Diesel (Hybrid)
Using paint, glitter and paper to collage over photographs of intimacy, Sarah Anne Johnson makes sensuality a tactile experience in a two dimensional form. The images themselves are soft, a combination of nude skin and buttery lighting, but with her added layer an almost fantasmic element shines through each body, bringing forth a desire from within each scene. Pick a Hybrid that feeds that mind and body sensuality, and pushes up that deeper romanticism in all of us.
Artist: Maya Hayuk
Strain: Granddaddy Purple (Indica)
Street artist and painter Maya Hayuk’s work is always physical, no matter if it’s painting her signature geometric patterns of bright colors on a 15 foot mural or twisting a canvas in different directions to let the colors drip free. Paired with a heavy Indica, these vivid pieces will do the moving your body can’t while the neon hues almost come through the flat surface, pushing dimensions while maintaining a structure that is cooly satisfying.
