The worlds of surreal fantasy

Illogical and unnerving scenes have long been used by surrealists to depict the machinations of the unconscious mind, and taking inspiration from this genre has opened up these artists’ own personal dreamworld.

Concept artist journey into the unreal began with a painting by dystopian surrealist Zdzisław Beksinski. “It haunted me for a long time,” she says. “I found something in it that I had not seen anywhere else.” Although the art had affected her profoundly, it took a while for Mélissa to feel confident enough to put something of this into her own work; she thought it wasn’t what people wanted her to create, and doing so didn’t feel legitimate to her. “I painted a lot of environments and I always loved the melancholic feeling they had. But one day, a client whose