A Stroke of Memory

The face came to me before the technique. Or maybe it had always been there—haunting the edge of my imagination like a recurring figure in someone else’s dream. Dali. Not the man exactly, but the myth—wrapped in fire, frozen in wood.

I began “Salvator Dali” not with a brushstroke, but with thousands of handcrafted cubes, each one a pigment-soaked cell of memory. It wasn’t just about capturing his likeness; it was about transforming surrealism into structure—about suspending a dream in physical space. I used repetition to build rhythm, and chaos to interrupt it. That tension was the point.

His piercing eyes—icy blue and almost too human—were carved one shade at a time. The crimson glow around his head, a halo of dissonance, suggested divinity and danger. I didn’t want the piece to feel comfortable. I wanted it to feel alive. To hum with the absurd energy that made Dali more than an artist—made him a portal.

When I heard the piece received an Honorable Mention, I smiled. Because that’s exactly what it was meant to be: a nod, a flicker, a glitched mirror. Not a portrait, but an offering. A mosaic hallucination that pays homage not just to Dali, but to the power of artistic obsession—to the idea that madness, when channeled carefully, can become form.