In The Garden of Earthly Delights, the figuration is so bizarre and imaginative that the underlying Christian symbolism recedes into the background. The images seem to stand on their own.

This fantastical, free-flowing imagery and singular vision give the impression of a truly independent spirit—an artist in the modern sense.

What’s striking is how this sense of creative freedom contrasts sharply with the painting’s unmistakable Renaissance craftsmanship. That tension is precisely what gives the work such a contemporary edge, at least for me.

And honestly, a bunch of flowers stuck in the ass of a figure has quite a potential to comment on the present—it’s surreal, absurd, and strangely fitting.

It reminds me of a brilliant press release Alissa Bennett once wrote about my work, titled The Stockholm Syndrome. She described how my pieces use beauty to lure viewers into confronting something much darker beneath the surface. That dynamic, beauty as bait for unsettling truths, feels very much in dialogue with what Bosch was doing centuries ago.