🏅 ARTIST SPOTLIGHT

#VRArtLive Gallery September 2021

Title: Reality Is

Artist: Ewan Rose

VR App/s: Tiltbrush

Curator: wildc4rd

Editor: grrlrighter

Reality is

Commentary by Ewan Rose

This piece is titled ‘Reality Is’ - a name chosen from one of Alan Watts’s talks on ‘The Art of Meditation’.

When I first listened to this talk, I was in a deep battle against depression, and - forgive me for being clichéd, dear reader - but it was like a light shone out of the darkness that night and illuminated a portal to a brighter world.

Looking back, I’m not sure what exactly gripped me so fiercely about him then. He was simply explaining a non-Western culture of thinking, the existence of which many people on this Earth already understand... but maybe simplicity was the entire point. The fact is right in front of our faces: Reality is indescribably beautiful - even in darkness, even in suffering - and that beauty is precious and easy to forget.

I made this artwork to battle my own feelings of despair, and to hopefully remind others that this life is still worth fighting for.

I know that art is only a gesture, and that renewed hope is a hard-earned resource... but I think that genuine expression is the only way forward through what’s to come. To be honest with one another, to uplift one another... to remind ourselves that as long as we still have the ability to create a better future, not all is lost.

I feel like I might be going off topic, that maybe I should be explaining my process, or talking about what brushes I used... but this piece was purely made from a feeling of the heart. VR allowed me to immerse myself in that feeling and bring it to life in a way beyond my wildest imaginations, so if there’s one dream I have for the medium, it’s that it becomes more accessible and that artists continue pushing the limits of what it’s capable of.

I feel privileged to be alive during a time where technology like virtual reality can connect people and ideas like never before—as long as we don’t lose touch with regular reality in the process.

To quote Watts himself: “Like everything else, it’s useful in moderation. A good servant but a bad master.”

See more by Ewan Rose:

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