Meditations

Depp has long been fascinated by what makes us human. His travels, his reading and the roles he chooses, often portraying characters at the periphery of society, allow him to explore notions of identity and the (often problematic) nature of mankind. In Depp’s Meditations, figures who seem serene and others marked by their troubles jostle with each other for our attention, often radiant against colourful backdrops. Some of them sport hieratic markings which hint at connections to dimensions that are occult and arcane, adding a mystical ambience.

This is heightened by the figures of The Everyman and The Bunnyman: these are avatars, protective personas. The Bunnyman in particular entered this pantheon of pictorial characters when Depp noticed that his son Jack drew, and had dreamt about, a figure similar to those of Depp’s own childhood dreams. Struck by the coincidence, this figure, cut from the pre-Spandex cloth of the 1960s superheroes, became a talisman in Depp’s own pictures.