Ben Goossens: Reborn

Surrealist artist and photographer Ben Goossens is an ex-directer that is from Belgium. He calls his award winning digital montages his “hobby.” Goossens started creating digital art after retiring from his 35 year career as an art director in advertising and already having 15 years of experience using photoshop. I am attracted to the surrealist aspect to his images. Surrealist digital art is what I want my senior seminar images to be. All of his images are very inspiring in the way each form is transformed into something else. The image Reborn takes a tree stump and has a square cut out of the center of it, with a tree being reborn into it. What I like the most about Reborn is that it is a positive message. The stump is not the end of the life cycle of the tree, because another tree is growing out of it. The solidness of the trunk lends itself to the dead, petrified appearance. The sparseness of the background and neutral colors bring the eye to the center of the image; the tree. The tree is green and healthy, it looks like it will last a long time. The tree also looks like a fruit tree, which would go with the theme of rebirth.