Totemic Impressions (2026) Original Oil Painting by Marcus Sprigens

Totemic Impressions begins with decalcomania: paint pressed from a plastic sheet onto the canvas and lifted away, leaving impressions no brush could replicate — blooms, ridges and craters forming a raw, unplanned topology across the surface. Glazes of vermillion and yellow iron oxide set the underpainting, preparing the ground for the superimposed detail work to follow.

Rather than treating that chance-based ground as blank texture, the resulting patterns are read as visual suggestions — forms already latent in the surface, developed rather than invented outright. Two totem-like pillars emerge from the process, built from stacked pareidolia.

The piece sits at the meeting point of surrealist automatism and deliberate oil painting craft — chance-based mark-making resolved, layer by layer, into a fully realised scene.

Materials used:

Oil paint, linseed oil, acrylic

Details:

• Oil painting on Canvas
• One of a kind artwork
• Size: 30 x 40 x 0.5cm (unframed) / 30 x 40cm (actual image size)
• Signed on the back
• Style: Surrealistic
• Subject: Abstract and non-figurative