Fantasy/ volume 12

Fantasy begins at the point where the boundaries of reality become fluid. It is a realm where imagination can reshape the familiar, where ordinary landscapes can become mysterious worlds, and where impossible ideas can take on form, colour, and presence. More than an escape from reality, fantasy can be a way of looking at it differently—through dreams, symbolism, memory, mythology, emotion, and intuition.

Throughout the history of art, artists have turned to fantasy to explore what lies beyond the immediately visible. Imagined figures, unfamiliar landscapes, mythical creatures, invented worlds, and transformed objects have provided ways to express experiences that cannot always be communicated through direct representation. Fantasy creates a space where contradictions can coexist: beauty and darkness, reality and illusion, the familiar and the unknown.

In this special edition of Collect Art Magazine, international artists approach fantasy from diverse personal and cultural perspectives. Through painting, drawing, mixed media, digital art, and photography, they construct worlds that range from dreamlike and poetic to surreal, symbolic, mysterious, and otherworldly. Some works emerge from imagined narratives, while others transform elements of everyday life into something unexpected. Across these different approaches, imagination becomes both a subject and a method of artistic exploration.

Fantasy also allows artists to investigate the relationship between the inner and outer worlds. A dream may become a landscape; a memory may take the form of a figure; an emotion may be translated into colour or texture. What appears imaginary can often contain deeply personal truths, reflecting fears, desires, memories, questions, and hopes. In this sense, fantasy does not necessarily take us away from reality—it can bring us closer to aspects of ourselves that remain hidden within it.

The artists presented in this edition demonstrate the extraordinary freedom that emerges when visual language is released from the limitations of the literal. Through different techniques, materials, and approaches, they invite viewers to suspend certainty and enter spaces where interpretation remains open. Their works encourage us to imagine alternative possibilities, to question what we perceive, and to discover meaning beyond what is immediately given.

Perhaps the enduring power of fantasy lies precisely in this freedom. It allows us to dream without abandoning thought, to invent without losing connection to experience, and to see the world not only as it is, but as it might become.

Fantasy is an invitation to cross that threshold—to enter worlds shaped by imagination, where the impossible becomes possible and where art gives form to the limitless landscape of the human mind.