welcome to my deceased art blog

We shouldn't think of art as some magically progressive profession. We need to recognize the class division between proletarian artists and bourgeois artists. We need to recognize that if you are someone who is acting towards a goal of privately owning and profiting from intellectual property, then you are petit-bourgeois and your material interests will align with the capitalist class. From that perspective, the anti-communist tendencies of indie artists become obvious rather than mysterious.

Communism won't let you own an idea or a character or a media franchise. Communism won't let you license properties and collect revenue. Communism won't let you earn passive income. So to someone whose envisioned career path is "I will make a popular piece of media and live off of the revenue of sales, licensing, and/or merchandising", the abolition of private property is genuinely frightening.

but consistently im noticing something odd, which is that over and over the plants depicted in art are very familiar -- they're houseplants. pothos. monstera. calathea. zamioculcas. plants growing in the wrong place, at the wrong time, in the wrong climate, a mishmash of unrelated folks with far-flung origins symbolizing "natural" retaking of the modern world.

plants, specifically, that are directly tied to the legacy of colonialism. from northern africa. from southern america. from india. plants that were collected as curios during periods of direct imperialism. plants kept as trophies, plants sold at high prices. plants that are "exotic". that are beautiful. that are high-value. plants whose people got no payment for their capture.

they're the plants people in american colonial territory, who lack access to native plant community, see most often -- that is, other than "weeds". and so when these artists reach for the pure idea of plant, the concept of nature, these plants are their only blueprint. dragging with them all of the baggage of hundreds of years of empire.

Glow I - Sean William Randall , 2025.

Canadian , b. 1965 -

sleeping citrus 🍊

A Cuttlefish in motion

hand in hand <3

First Post!

I deleted my old tumblr because... man idk why it was covid-times and the prefrontal cortex was not in the room with us!! Anyways, I was reminded by my lovely friend @repecca that tumblr exists, and that some of my work has been going around on here, so I decided to post some of my work up officially! Starting off with my most notable (?) work to date, here's my LOTR: The Middle Kingdom Project. Now, it's been over a year since I posted this, and at the time I was... really searchingfor myself artistically, and I decided to go all in on something that I'd been ruminating on for a long time.