In recent years, the previous method has reached a point of saturation. The reliance on mental images, subconscious emergence, and internal permutation—effective for a long period—has gradually become a limiting structure. The process began to demand images before work could start, creating a bottleneck where production depended on apparition rather than engagement. What once allowed intensity now imposed control.

This new body of work emerges from a deliberate shift away from that internalized image-making. Instead of waiting for images to surface, Sebastian now works from already existing images: photographs of photographs, postcards, printed reproductions, archival material, and secondary visual sources. These images are chosen not for their narrative value, but for their distance from lived experience. They are already degraded, mediated, anonymous, and detached from any claim to truth or revelation.

Painting becomes a way to confront this distance rather than resolve it. The figures, spaces, and scenes remain recognizable, yet unstable—blurred, faded, partially erased. The realism is present but weakened, as if recalled rather than observed. The image does not aim to explain, symbolize, or uncover psychological depth; it records loss, omission, and erosion. Meaning is not hidden behind the image, but thinned out within it.

This approach reflects a broader condition: after the collapse of spiritual frameworks and the exhaustion of psychological interpretation as a source of meaning, the image persists only as residue. What remains is not transcendence or introspection, but a fragile visual trace—something seen too late, remembered inaccurately, or reproduced once too often.

The work no longer seeks intensity through precision or control, but through subtraction. By accepting imprecision, failure, and repetition, the paintings operate as states rather than statements. They do not propose a position; they register a condition. The act of painting becomes less an attempt to preserve an image than to witness its gradual disappearance.