• blog
  • in the shadow of sun mountain
  • buy my books
  • photographs
  • paintings
  • bio
  • cv
  • contact
  • search
Menu

Studio Q Photography

Exploring Human Behavior and Death Anxiety Through Art
  • blog
  • in the shadow of sun mountain
  • buy my books
  • photographs
  • paintings
  • bio
  • cv
  • contact
  • search
×

“Automatic Fantastic,” 30” x 40” (72 x 102cm), acrylic and mixed media on canvas. April 25, 2025 Quinn Jacobson Las Cruces, New Mexico

I really like how the cadmium red dripping down from the left “eye” follows the texture in the painting. This iPhone snap doesn’t do it justice. I hope you get the idea, though.

UPDATE: As I've lived with "Automatic Fantastic" in my living room these past days, I find myself constantly drawn to it, discovering layers I hadn't initially perceived. Perhaps the most significant revelation has been the two cadmium red drips that now unmistakably appear as figures to me - facing each other in what seems like a dance. But not just any dance - they're leaning back from one another, creating this wonderful tension in their posture. I see them now as contemplative beings, suspended in motion while engaged in some weightier communion. They dance, yes, but they also philosophize - their backward arcs suggesting a simultaneous physical and mental reaching. There's something profoundly existential in how they hold space together, as if their movement is both an acknowledgment of mortality and a defiance of it.

Thinking About Doctoral Studies and V.2 Automatic Fantastic

Quinn Jacobson April 25, 2025

THINKING ABOUT THE DOCTORAL STUDIES PROGRAM

Starting a doctoral program is a strange thing—part intellectual pursuit, part personal reckoning. You don’t just show up to study something interesting; you’re expected to bring something new into the world. The whole premise of a PhD is to explore uncharted terrain—to contribute original thought to a field that matters to you.

That’s not as simple as it sounds. Academia doesn’t reward echo chambers. You need a question that hasn't been fully asked yet, or at least not asked in your way. For me, that means going deeper into what I’ve already spent years wrestling with: mortality, creativity, and the human need to matter in the face of death.

As I write this today, my thesis is rooted in the importance of creativity—not as a luxury, but as a lifeline. Specifically, I’m exploring how artists navigate the awareness of death and the existential tension it creates. What does it mean to make something—anything—while knowing you're impermanent? Does that act of creation actually change anything? Does it soothe, disrupt, clarify? And if it does… how?

These are the questions that pull at me. They’re not abstract. I’ve lived them. I’ve applied these ideas to my own creative process for years, using photography and painting as a way to wrestle with grief, memory, and the inevitability of death. What I’m after now is a deeper understanding—not just for myself, but for others who feel the same pull toward making meaning in a world that guarantees our disappearance.

The doctoral program I’ve joined refers to this early vision as a “vision seed.” I like that. Seeds hold potential. They require care, patience, and the right conditions to grow. My vision seed is simple: I want to ask new questions at the intersection of art, psychology, and philosophy. I want to know what happens when creatives become fully conscious of the existential work their art is doing—when they no longer sublimate unconsciously but engage directly with mortality through the act of making.

If I can shape this into something useful, I hope to produce a thesis that not only contributes to the academic conversation but also encourages a more vital, creative, and psychologically honest way of living. Ideally, this research becomes the foundation for a university course—something like Creativity and Mortality: Confronting the Void Through Art. A course for artists, therapists, and seekers. For anyone brave enough to stop looking away.

Maybe it’s a workshop. Maybe it’s a lecture series. Maybe it's something entirely new—a space where art becomes both expression and inquiry, where mortality isn’t denied but invited into the room. Either way, this is the path I’m on. And for the first time in a long while, it feels like the right one.

AUTOMATIC FANTASTIC V.2
I wasn’t finished with this painting yesterday - I kind of knew that but wanted to think about it. I think this piece perfectly embodies what Becker would call our "immortality project"—the desperate creative act against the void. The black textured background creates this sense of cosmic darkness, the kind we all fear when contemplating non-existence. The twin red-orange circles with their dripping streaks remind me of weeping eyes, like the piece itself is crying out against its own mortality.

The scratched and chaotic surface texture feels like my own anxious mind trying to make order from disorder. Isn't that what we're all doing? Creating meaning through art to ward off death anxiety? The stark contrast between the vibrant orange-red and the textured black background creates this visceral tension - life against death, consciousness against oblivion.

There's something primal here that connects to what Terror Management Theory suggests about our symbolic defenses against mortality. The almost face-like quality emerging from the blackness speaks to me of the self trying to assert itself against nothingness. The dripping paint suggests impermanence, yet the work itself stands as a defiant act of creation.

This piece doesn't just represent death anxiety - it performs it through its very existence. As an artist, I'm not just depicting mortality; I'm actively negotiating with it, creating something that might outlast my physical self. Isn't that what separates artistic creation from other forms of death denial? We don't just distract ourselves from death - we transform our relationship with it.

In Acrylic Painting, Art & Theory, Death Anxiety, Death and Dying Tags automatic fantastic, terror management theory, death denial, death anxiety, Ernest Becker
← OcotilloAutomatic Fantastic →

Search Posts

Archive Block
This is example content. Double-click here and select a page to create an index of your own content. Learn more
Post Archive
  • Photography
 

Featured Posts

Featured
May 9, 2025
Between Being and Ending: The Existential Significance of Art in a Finite Life
May 9, 2025
May 9, 2025
May 4, 2025
Ocotillo
May 4, 2025
May 4, 2025
Apr 25, 2025
Thinking About Doctoral Studies and V.2 Automatic Fantastic
Apr 25, 2025
Apr 25, 2025
Apr 24, 2025
Automatic Fantastic
Apr 24, 2025
Apr 24, 2025
Apr 20, 2025
You're Neurotic: How Neurotic Are You?
Apr 20, 2025
Apr 20, 2025
Apr 17, 2025
What a 19th-Century Photograph Reveals About Power, Privilege and Violence in the American West
Apr 17, 2025
Apr 17, 2025
Mar 22, 2025
Update on My Book and Preparing for My Doctoral Studies (PhD Program)
Mar 22, 2025
Mar 22, 2025
Mar 7, 2025
Arundel Camera Club (Maryland) Talk
Mar 7, 2025
Mar 7, 2025
Feb 27, 2025
We Lost Moshe Yesterday to Cancer
Feb 27, 2025
Feb 27, 2025
Feb 21, 2025
Proof Print of My New Book!
Feb 21, 2025
Feb 21, 2025