☙Bosch Buddies❧

Bosch Buddies was a daily creative challenge I set for myself in 2023 where I did 120 creative projects across 120 days based on the works of Heironymus Bosch. The 15th Century Dutch painter was a master of his craft, Bosch’s magnum opus: The Garden of Earthly Delights is my favourite painting of all time. Bosch’s work is everything from thoroughly detailed to playful, holy to horrific, comedic to honourable. Every time I look art a piece from Hieronymus Bosch, I find something new and joyful to experience and learn from.

Bosch Buddies was a project I set for myself during a period where I was adapting to a new life as an immigrant to America, where so many every day nuances are left feeling absurd. I wanted to seize the absurdist nature of Bosch’s work and learn from it in my spare time and thanks to the project I fell in love with doodling like when I was a little ankle-biter. Through the Bosch Buddies project I learned so many new techniques and what I personally got out of making art for myself instead of for work. I learned to use obscure imagery to express feeling personally, politically, and emotionally.

The work of Heironymus Bosch has impacted me in many ways, especially my art and my relationship with it. I think as a creative that is a relationship worth emotionally fostering and caring for. It is important to be flexible and find the fun in the things that are hard to understand, to see what is charming in the obscure.
To honour this lesson, I got a tattoo of my favourite little creature from The Garden of Earthly Delights, I got the tattoo on my ankle, to mirror the placement of the little fellow’s location on the masterpiece. This sealing in ink is a reminder of the lessons I learned about my relationship to art and the masters that came before me.