$28,000

As we are all children of Modernism, there’s a nervousness around metaphysical subjects. We talk easily about the plastic and formal qualities of art, but not about its spiritual content. Most artists are spiritual though, not in a dogmatic sense, but in the abiding tension they feel between the materialist worldview and the strangely numinous, guiding presence within their own work. But whether The Girl Disappears describes a literal experience, a metaphorical experience, a desire for such an experience, or is pure fantasy – it is beautiful. J.R.R. Tolkien famously defended fantasy as a form of recovery and consolation, and as ultimately illuminating of true reality[i]. He likened its “escapism” to a prisoner’s duty to escape rather than a deserter’s flight. In short, when the world gets so awful, there’s a moral imperative to leave it. “Death is nothing at all,” wrote Henry Scott Holland, “I have only slipped away to the next room.[ii]” Transcendence, says Dorland, is a glowing girl, in a private storm of atoms, merging with the haunted night.

[i] On Fairy Stories, by J.R.R. Tolkien, 1947

[ii]Henry Scott Holland delivered the words of what is commonly known as the poem Death is Nothing at All during a sermon titled Death the King of Terrors in May 1910