What is surreal wall art (and why it’s not for everyone)
I didn’t grow up dreaming of making “wall art”. That phrase always had a slightly too polite ring to it. It felt decorative and mundane. Something meant to match the sofa in your parents’ living room.
What pulled me towards surreal imagery was something else entirely. Western visual culture often tries to smooth things over. There’s a constant strive towards perfection — making life look clean, simple and manageable, while real life is anything but. That never really matched how things felt on the inside. I wanted to see the cracks, and what lies beneath them.
Surreal art felt more honest. It’s less about what things look like, and more about what they feel like. Dreams, fears, symbols, distorted bodies, impossible spaces. Things that feed from the subconscious. Not because they’re strange for the sake of it, but because that’s how the world often feels.
Surreal art wasn’t my style of choice at the beginning of my artistic journey, but somehow I naturally gravitated in that direction. Once I got there, it felt like I had found my style — or maybe more accurately, my creative home.
What does surreal wall art actually mean?
Surreal wall art isn’t really a style in the traditional sense, like minimalism or abstract art. It’s more a way of seeing — an ability to look beyond the surface.
When people think of surrealism, they often think of Salvador Dalí. But surreal art isn’t just that. It goes beyond melting clocks and strange landscapes. It’s not about copying a specific visual language, it’s about approaching reality from a different angle.
Instead of representing reality accurately, surreal art tries to represent inner reality. The subconscious. All those things you feel but can’t easily put into words. Memories, anxieties, desires, contradictions. All the messy stuff that’s difficult to capture with a photograph or a realistic painting.
That’s why surreal imagery often feels dreamlike or symbolic. Objects turn into other objects. Bodies merge with landscapes. Faces become masks that hide things you don’t want others to see. Natural laws stop applying in the way you would normally expect.
For me, surreal art isn’t about technical perfection or visual polish. It’s about emotional truth. About capturing a mood, a tension, a psychological state. Sometimes that results in something beautiful. Sometimes it results in something unsettling. And sometimes it’s both at the same time.
Why surreal art divides people
Let’s face it, surreal art is polarising.
Some people are immediately drawn to it. Others find it uncomfortable, confusing, or even disturbing. And that makes complete sense.
Most wall art is designed to be easy to live with. Calm colours. Familiar subjects. Nothing too demanding. It’s art that requires zero effort from the viewer. Something you glance at on your way out without really feeling anything in particular. It’s the kind of art you forget about.
Surreal art does the opposite. It’s loud and asks for attention. It introduces ambiguity. It doesn’t always explain itself. It might trigger something emotional or unresolved. And not everyone wants that kind of attention-grabber hanging on their wall.
That’s also why surreal art often gets described as “weird”, “dark” or “creepy”. Not because it’s trying to shock, but because it doesn’t prioritise comfort. It prioritises expression. It stands out.
If you’re looking for art that blends quietly into the background, surreal wall art probably isn’t for you. And that’s fine. It’s not meant to be universal. We’re not all wired in the same way. Some of us just have a few cables connected differently.
Surreal art in interior spaces
What’s interesting is how surreal art behaves in real spaces.
In modern interiors especially, where everything tends to be minimal, neutral and controlled, surreal imagery creates friction. It claims space. It’s a rupture in the visual calm. A glitch. Suddenly the art stops being just decoration.
Instead of merely supporting the room, it changes the whole mood. And paradoxically, by introducing imperfection, it can actually make a space feel more human.
A surreal artwork doesn’t just decorate a space, it adds atmosphere. It can make a room feel more introspective, more emotional, more alive. It turns a purely aesthetic wall into something personal.
For some people, that’s exactly the point. They don’t want their home to feel like an IKEA showroom. They want their space to reflect how they think and what they feel.
Different flavours of surreal wall art
Surreal art isn’t one thing. It spans a wide range of moods and visual languages. These are the directions I’ve been exploring in my own work.
The occult and esoteric
This side of surrealism leans into symbols, rituals, mysticism and the esoteric. It draws inspiration from religion, mythology, and the idea that there’s something hidden beneath everyday reality. These works blur the lines between the real and the unreal.
In my own work, this shows up in pieces that feel ceremonial or otherworldly. Where subjects seem to exist between worlds, or on a different plane of existence altogether.
You’ll find this kind of imagery in my The New Occult collection.
Grotesque and organic
Here things become more physical. Bodies transform. Faces distort. Organic forms grow in unnatural ways. You can feel the tension.
This branch of surrealism is about the strange relationship we have with our own bodies and with nature. It can feel uncomfortable, but at the same time also strangely familiar. Like seeing something you recognise but can’t quite place.
Grotesque surrealism is certainly not for everyone.
My Grotesque and Organic collection sits in this territory.
Mythic and symbolic
Some surreal art feels more narrative. Like fragments from a story partly unwritten, or a myth that doesn’t fully exist.
These works often use archetypes: figures, masks, animals, landscapes that carry symbolic weight without spelling out a clear meaning. They’re often based on myths that used to define us, but seen from an unconventional perspective. They’re not self-explanatory and invite interpretation.
That’s the space where The Garden of Eden lives.
Abstract and emotional
Then there’s the more abstract side, where imagery becomes less about objects and more about mood. These works play with loud colours, sharp textures, strange forms and unconventional compositions. It’s about capturing a feeling, rather than depicting something specific.
A lot of my more recent work falls into this category, where the emotional response matters more than literal meaning.
Who surreal wall art is really for
Surreal wall art isn’t for people who want certainty and predictability. For people who want something safe.
It’s for people who are comfortable with friction and ambiguity. Who are drawn to inner worlds, emotional complexity, contradictions. People who are curious enough to look through those cracks.
If you’re turned off by perfection and “normal” art feels empty or decorative to you, that’s usually a sign. Not that you have better taste (you might), but that you’re looking for something that resonates on a different level.
Something that looks wrong but feels right.
Surreal art doesn’t try to explain the world. It reflects it back in distorted and sometimes uncomfortable ways. And for some of us, that’s the truth.
If this way of seeing sounds familiar, you’ll probably feel at home in my collections.