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How Nightmare Imagery Can Create Beauty in Art

  • Writer: Justin Cianciolo
    Justin Cianciolo
  • Dec 19, 2024
  • 1 min read

Nightmare imagery and nightmare-inspired art takes what is often feared and transforms it into something profound. At The Kneverworks, our dark surreal prints challenge perceptions by finding beauty in chaos and shadows.

Nightmare Imagery as an Artistic Tool

Using unsettling visuals, such as fragmented landscapes or decaying structures, we explore themes of resilience and introspection. One piece, inspired by the artist’s struggles with fibromyalgia, portrays a decaying machine in a world teetering on the edge of collapse.

Finding Beauty in the Darkness

By pairing stark contrasts with delicate details, nightmare-inspired art becomes a medium for storytelling and emotional expression. It’s not about glorifying fear but embracing it as part of the human experience. For instance, our "Nonmon" series uses fractured forms to reflect the complexity of emotions.


This piece reflects the experience of dating someone with PTSD and dissociative disorder and the subsequent end of that relationship. The balloons symbolize both the loss of innocence and allude to sperm cells. The innocence is depicted as floating away, wrapped around a mangled hand, while the female figure is tethered to a spinning object. The male figure in the painting features an antenna in place of an ear, blending my figurative and robot-inspired work. This serves as a metaphor for an inability to hear and the masking of true listening, where what is heard is filtered through gendered communication. The telephone pole, lacking attached lines, appears almost as a religious icon, further emphasizing this theme.

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