Thematically Funk God most often focuses on the concept of the sublime; the philosophical notion that something can be paradoxically divine, inspiring, beautiful,

but also horrific, destructive, agonizing, and the state of chaos that incongruence creates. It confronts this absurdity of existence by playing with surrealism, states of consciousness, dreamlike and bizarre visuals, fragmentation, playful and sardonic poeticisms, and psychedelia.

 

Funk must earnestly approach, question, and deconstruct the sublime chaos by demonstrating it openly, using the mindfulness concept of radical acceptance to lean into the paradoxes, rather than avoid or hide from them. It believes that encountering absurdity with a lens of acceptance, humor, exaggeration, or at least bittersweet veneration, allows for the threat of chaos to be less devastating, and an appreciation for the sublime to generate gratitude and vitality.

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Funk shows a juxtaposition of overwhelming vitality and devastation through psychedelic structures such as geometry, repetition of form, mirroring, intense and hyper-saturated vivid color, and classical hallucinogenic visuals inspired by altered states of consciousness and spirituality.

 

Psychedelic means “mind manifestation” so these compositions represent existential emotions, thoughts, sensations by breaking them down into raw non-objective abstract shapes, colors, lines, waves of energy.

It is a method to creating order out of chaos by compositing existence into palatable rectangles which hold specific discrete elements of meaning. Ordering the chaos this way is therapeutic to processing immediate problems, a more distant past, as well as primordial concerns.

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The Funk God aesthetic can be described as maximalist, playful, humorous, pop art kitsch, vaporwave, nostalgic, retro, expressionist, and metamodernist. This affectionately can be called a funky fusion of "cosmic clownery." Much of the work concerns the transcendence of time, space, and reality, creating a retro-futuristic liminality which simultaneously instills nostalgia for aesthetics of a romanticized past, and a longing for an idealistic future. Remediation is integral to the process as it focuses on experimentation to develop and evolve into the final composition, allowing for a mindful exploration of immediate thoughts and emotions of the unconscious mind to lead towards a concept which later reveals itself.

 

Rarely is the work obviously deliberate in its initial intention. It allows for the creation, destruction, and remediation to unfold into the aesthetic identity arising from emotional or mental preoccupation as it transforms the piece. Each piece is a free-form journey where there are few to no constraints or limitations on how it will flow compositionally or conceptually. When fused, the work can be considered mixed media that can either resemble the cut and paste aesthetic of traditional collage, or a seamless abstract blending more analogous to painting. The original iconography is blended and reconstructed in the new piece so that only traces linger, evoking a simultaneous familiarity and novel experience. 

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The final pieces essential to the Funk God aesthetic are the textual and typographic elements. The visual compositions often use poeticisms, truisms, or direct contemplations based in language. Text in art engages the viewer in a different way

than pure visual methods because it alerts the language center of the brain and the optical. Funky pop-art styles are incorporated with bold colorful text to inspire connections between the connotation of the words and imagery. 

 

Whether textual elements are present or absent, the titles of the pieces always elucidate some form of artistic intention, typically afforded to the piece in the immediate aftermath of the aesthetic finalization. The titling serves as a subjective description of what the work, creative process, or particular condition meant to me in the moment, signaling to others the aesthetic implication, although often viewers are encouraged to draw their own funky conclusions based on their lived experience.

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