Art After Objects: Why I Moved the Work into Perception
JOURNAL ANNOTATIONS744 words · 3 min readA friend asked me over coffee: You haven’t shared new art lately—what has the work become? I loved the question; I hadn’t quite thought of it that way. I haven’t left art—I’ve moved the studio into perception. For now I’m quiet on Instagram because the work is turning inward and then back into motion. This is personal. I’m testing in public and trying to speak plainly to the people I love and the thinkers I admire. When projects return, they’ll point in one direction: the inquiry.
When perception leads, the face becomes a doorway. LeafHead Project, 2024.
Call it poetic activism, or a trial run of philosophical idealism∞, or just creativism with its sleeves rolled up. Maybe this is how I metabolize the crisis mood—walking its backstreets, looking for a new frontier. I’ve shape-shifted more times than I can count; perhaps this is simply the next turn in that long thread. Is this the way I scout what the work wants to become?
If anything, at almost 50, I find the mind itself is where I’d rather be. As a flâneur∞ in the mind, I feel free again. The Dreamer Project experiment—an active and sustained discipline—might be the relief I need. I can eventually bring myself back to art.
One of my pieces, 2021 (Available as a print)
I’m drawn to the same appetite for perceptual freedom that animated the spirit of earlier movements—Impressionism, Surrealism, and the Nouvelle Vague. Not as a claim of lineage—just a kinship of method: loosen the frame, watch new forms appear.
That inquiry into the nature of mind and reality is an itch that won’t leave me. I need this conversation inside me. I’m obsessed with observing life happening on its own within me. I’ve enjoyed joining the many fields of creativity my projects took me through, but there’s one I keep finding more spacious and more wonderful than any other: the mind.
I’m cautious with titles. Some know me as a designer, others from my startup days as an entrepreneur; I make art, yes, but I think of myself more simply as a creative type. Labels. Roles we play. Someone I deeply respect once said: don’t claim titles that take others decades to earn. I’m not in the gallery circuit, and I respect the work of those making a living there. I see how much discipline it takes to make and sell work in that lane—in the art world, nothing’s a given; it’s hard. Really hard.
Ultimately, I’ve been more of a stubborn explorer than anything else—exploring identity across fronts, every aspect of existence, not just artistic endeavors. That’s creativism, I guess. It’s taken me from painting to photography, video-game technology to 3D web design, short vertical videos to smartphone apps, strategic design to furniture, and finally digital painting… to mind-first creative experimentation. And why not?
Colored pencil drawing, 2025 | Made for my father, Jean-Philippe Lenclos, during our morning art session at his beach house in France.
At the moment, my offer is an invitation—through a thought process and a design approach—to explore what many never consider possible in a lifetime: What if mind is where everything happens—yourself, your family, your dog, your work, the world, even the cosmos? Whoever wants to can join the experiment. My interpretation of the hypothesis that consciousness is fundamental is summarized in the living theory of We The Dreamer. While we are dreaming, the mind mistakes the world for its cause and the body for proof. What can we do to awaken to a consciousness-first reality?
A handful of friends and collaborators have resonated with this and explored it with me. It turns out a poetic, creative take on the hard problem of consciousness has a place. With them, I’ve enjoyed many conversations, and some have purchased art or offered design work so we could explore these ideas through graphic design or object design—Self-Questioning Devices.
Since 2022, I’ve developed only a few collaborations. Every one has been amazing. More than producing art, it’s been an opportunity for me to attune to a design mindset that could give me—and others—a wider latitude of being. Perhaps it’s an exploration of modes of perception we overlook. Whether the mind-first experiment produces the creative uplift I’m hoping for, it’s through layered concepts and applied methods—like the Four Cs framework, the Design for Nothing approach, or mantras like Piece of Mind—that I navigate.
I see an opportunity to think beyond “what about your role as an artist?” and to consider the repercussions of a new mindset being needed. This is personal and provisional. I’m moving my studio into perception for a while to test whether a mind-first lens changes how life unfolds, how reality behaves when the stance changes, and whether creativity opens new dimensions. I’m grateful for anyone who reads, questions, or tries a small field test with me—now or later.
When the experiment ripens, objects—art, technology even—will follow.
