William Darkdrac’s scratched and cracked airbrush paintings are a window to a haunted world

William Darkdrac’s brilliant airbrush paintings lend themselves to an oddly voyeuristic feeling. Usually painted from what looks like the point of view of a cracked and scratched window, these paintings take away the often omnipresent angle of most paintings and put us right in the seat of a car, a taxi, a motorcycle helmet’s visor. “It’s a way of suggesting that what we see is never the full story; there’s always more beyond the surface,” says William. In these ominous, night-time scenes, we often see blurred traffic, as if seen through teary-eyes, or glowing figures roaming the city, shining as brightly as headlights or lampposts.

Ephemerality plays a big part here, these fleeting moments found in the dark, rainy midnight cityscapes. “I conceive the canvas as a window: behind it, a scene unfolds, but the viewer perceives it through a filter, as if looking from the outside in,” says William. “This visual ‘veil’ reflects the distance between what happens within and what we are able to see, connecting to themes such as self-knowledge, memory, and the barriers, real or symbolic, that prevent us from seeing clearly.” Exploring the occult, childhood and the temporality of life’s finest moments, William incorporates a dreamlike feel in order to colour what could be ordinary scenes. Through tactful blurring, William creates haunted textures where headlights become supernatural orbs, suggesting that we don’t just see but walk amongst ghosts.

“This artistic journey has also become a personal process of healing,” says William. “My process often begins with an image, sometimes a photograph I’ve taken myself, other times a picture of friends or found imagery that sparks an idea. From there, I start building an atmosphere that aligns with what I want to express or represent.” Striving to find deeper meaning within himself, William looks for narrative threads that transcend into the “universal, where emotions can be recognised as a part of a shared experience”. William’s paintings are a metaphorical window to his inner world, but also a window that belongs to the apartments, the hotel, the vehicles or public transportation that entice our most active daydreaming.