ecstatic passion for a low effort world

From Gabriel’s Lunacy Series

You don’t have to look far. You’re probably touching it right now. The pen in your hand, the chair you sit in, the screen you’re swiping — all echoes. Tracings of something once cared for. Once built to last.

Think of the Venetian mirror — once hand-silvered glass bordered with mouth-blown crystal, each piece a throne for its owner’s reflection. Now? Machine-cut, edge-glued, sold in a flatpack box and destined to chip before it gets hung. It was once the sign of someone with vision and station. Today, it’s background noise in a rental staged for someone else’s future.

Or the cameo. Once carved meticulously from sardonyx or coral — a tiny masterpiece passed down generations. Now, you’ll find them vacuum-cast in resin, priced cheaper than a cup of coffee and discarded just as easily. They used to outlive people. Now they barely outlast a trend.

We live in a copy-of-a-copy world. And when everything looks like everything else, what does anything mean?

Inspiration doesn’t strike in a landfill of sameness. It has to be carved. Demanded. Set on fire. This is not a time for mimics or echoes. This is a time to remember what it felt like when a single object could silence a room.

Now we may think that as we venture into the world of luxury goods, the bar will be raised, and the unseemly pinchbeck nature of corner-cutting would be spared, but a glance in the news tells us a different story. Here is the fact: Items from Hermès to Rolex to $20 million Miami condo decorations and trimmings are all mass produced. Yes, they may indeed be handcrafted according to a template by human hands — a luxurious upgrade from soulless milling, molding, and packaging — but they are still a far cry from what we should expect.

Which brings us to the question of value in a world of low effort and diminishing returns. True value is so rare, and nobody seems to mind. Nobody, except for hopefully you, my beloved reader.

Because somewhere along the line, we stopped recognizing the difference between attention and intention.

There is attention in the world, yes — so much of it that we’re drowning. Everything screams for it, flashes for it, even begs. But intention? That’s gone quiet. That’s where I come in. That’s what I fight for.

Each of my paintings is not a copy. Not a product. Not a "piece" to round out your collection. It is the opposite of convenience — it is confrontation. It confronts the disposability of culture. It confronts the trend of aesthetic cannibalism where art eats itself just to stay relevant. My work does not wish to be liked. It demands to be lived with. It is not for everyone, but if it’s for you — then you already know what it’s worth.

See, we live in a moment when you can buy "beauty" with a click and return it just as fast. But real beauty doesn’t arrive in a box. It arrives in silence. In awe. In the weight of knowing that you are in the presence of the last thing someone would ever make if they were running out of time.

That’s what I’m trying to do: paint like I’m out of time — and still, somehow, building eternity.

So no, not everyone will understand. They were never meant to. But you do. Or you’re beginning to.

And for that — for you — the sacred is still possible.

And so this space — this Inner Circle — is not a gallery. It’s not content. It’s not for passing time. It’s a sanctum where I share the most intimate elements of my life through visual art. It’s a quiet chamber carved into the noise where the sacred is not only remembered, but protected. In here, you are not an observer. You are a keeper. A guardian of what still matters. What still takes time. What still demands reverence. Welcome — not just to art, but to an oath.

Thank you for choosing the ecstatic.