Digital Art Series by Brandon Lake

series

The day #45 entered office is something I remember as clearly as 9/11—I know exactly where I was, what I was doing, and how I felt. This series reflects my experience of that moment and the years that followed: the disbelief, anger, chaos, and uncertainty. Each piece is titled after a song from Pink Floyd’s The Wall.

:#45

Run Like Hell

Run Like Hell transforms a photograph of Donald Trump into a fractured political portrait surrounded by color, distortion, and imagery inspired by Pink Floyd's The Wall. Along the bottom, the album's iconic marching hammers reference the fictional authoritarian movement depicted in the film, while the central figure appears to dissolve into the chaos surrounding him.

Created as political commentary, the piece explores themes of power, nationalism, conformity, and authoritarian imagery while continuing the visual conversation running through Brandon Lake's The Wall-inspired series.

Medium: Photography-Based Digital Collage
Source: Digitally manipulated photographic imagery
Musical Inspiration: Run Like Hell Pink Floyd, from The Wall

Stop

STOP is a political collage built from historical and contemporary photographic imagery, digitally layering a photograph of Donald Trump over an image of Adolf Hitler. The unexpected alignment of the two figures allows their faces, gestures, and bodies to visually merge, creating a deliberately provocative commentary on power, nationalism, political spectacle, and the repetition of history.

American flags, fragmented imagery, and distorted details collide throughout the piece, blurring past and present into a single chaotic composition. The title STOP comes from Pink Floyd's The Wall, connecting the work to the album's broader imagery of authoritarianism, isolation, and mass conformity.

Medium: Photography-Based Digital Collage
Source: Digitally manipulated photographic imagery
Musical Inspiration: Stop Pink Floyd, from The Wall

Waiting For The Worms_

Waiting for the Worms is a layered political collage exploring hatred, division, nationalism, and the ways destructive ideas can become embedded within a culture. Images associated with Donald Trump, political extremism, violence, and social unrest are distorted and concealed throughout the composition, forcing the viewer to look beyond the surface to discover what is hidden within.

Inspired by Pink Floyd's The Wall, the piece borrows its title from Waiting for the Worms, using the song as a thematic connection to conformity, authoritarian imagery, and the spread of hatred. What initially appears abstract gradually reveals a darker narrative beneath the surface.

Medium: Photography-Based Digital Collage
Source: Digitally manipulated photographic imagery
Musical Inspiration: Waiting for the Worms Pink Floyd, from The Wall

One photograph. One object. Three perceptions of the self. The Complex Series begins with a single photograph of a scorpion preserved in glass—an object I have owned since childhood. Using the same source image, I transformed the scorpion three times to explore different aspects of human psychology: our relationship with the body, our construction of identity, and our perception of our own value. The scorpion itself never changes. Only our perception of it does.

:Complexes

Adonis Complex

Adonis Complex is part of a three-piece series created from a single photograph of a scorpion preserved in glassan object the artist has kept since childhood. Each work begins with that same image but transforms it into a different visual interpretation of a psychological complex.

In Adonis Complex, the recognizable form of the scorpion has been fractured and reconstructed into an intense red landscape of distorted bodies, faces and organic forms. Figures appear to emerge from and disappear into one another, blurring the boundaries between the physical body and the perception of it.

Named for the Adonis Complexthe obsessive pursuit of an idealized male bodythe piece explores physical perfection, self-image, masculinity and the distortion that can occur when the body becomes something to judge rather than simply inhabit.

The original scorpion remains buried within the composition, transformed almost beyond recognition. Something once preserved and fixed in glass becomes fluid, unstable and open to interpretation.

Series: The Complex Series
Medium: Photography-Based Digital Art
Source: Original photograph of a preserved scorpion, digitally transformed by Brandon Lake

Ego Complex

Ego Complex is part of a three-piece series created from a single photograph of a scorpion preserved in glassan object the artist has kept since childhood. Each work begins with the same source image and transforms it into a different exploration of human psychology.

Here, the original scorpion is stretched, fractured, repeated, and intertwined until its recognizable form nearly disappears into a chaotic psychological landscape. Emerging from that disorder is a solitary blue human figuredistinct from its surroundings, yet still physically tethered to them.

The figure becomes a representation of the constructed self: the identity we create, protect, and project outward. Surrounding forms pull and twist around it, suggesting the constant tension between who we believe ourselves to be, how others perceive us, and what may actually exist underneath.

Ego Complex explores identity, self-perception, pride, insecurity, and the fragile boundary between a healthy sense of self and the ego's need to control its own image.

Series: The Complex Series
Medium: Photography-Based Digital Art
Source: Original photograph of a preserved scorpion, digitally transformed by Brandon Lake

Superiority Complex

Superiority Complex is the third work in a three-piece series created from a single photograph of a scorpion preserved in glassan object the artist has kept since childhood. Each piece transforms the same source photograph into a different exploration of human psychology.

Here, the scorpion's anatomy is distorted and fused with human anatomy. A heart and lungs emerge from its fragmented body, blurring the distinction between human and creature, exterior armor and vulnerable interior.

The imagery reflects the contradiction at the center of a superiority complex: an outward projection of strength, dominance, and confidence can exist alongside a deeply vulnerable internal self. The scorpion's hard exterior becomes a kind of psychological armor, while the exposed heart and lungs reveal the fragile living structures underneath.

The original object remains unchanged, preserved permanently in glass. Yet through each work in the series, its meaning changes completelysuggesting that perception, identity, and our understanding of ourselves can be far less permanent than they appear.

Series: The Complex Series
Medium: Photography-Based Digital Art
Source: Original photograph of a preserved scorpion, digitally transformed by Brandon Lake

A World on Fire explores the internal landscapes we create when relationships, memories, beliefs, and emotions begin to break apart. Using photography as a foundation, familiar places and objects are transformed into surreal environments where the physical world becomes a reflection of what is happening beneath the surface.

Across the series, recurring symbols of fire, isolation, destruction, religion, nature, and death appear within landscapes that feel both familiar and impossible. Rather than assigning each symbol a single meaning, the work leaves room for the viewer to bring their own experiences and interpretations to what they see.

At its core, A World on Fire is about the distance between the world around us and the world inside us—and what happens when the two begin to collide.

Series: A World on Fire
Medium: Photography-Based Digital Art
Photography & Digital Art: Brandon Lake

:A WORLD ON FIRE

A Million Miles Away

Part of the A World On Fire series, A Million Miles Away explores the emotional distance that emerges as a relationship reaches its end. Across an immense desert, a goat and scorpion occupy the same landscape but move in different directionstwo symbolic figures that remain connected even as the distance between them grows.

At the center, a solitary rose is being pulled into a swirling vortex, representing love disappearing beneath the surface. Nearby, the scorpion walks away, leaving a trail of blood across the sanda quiet suggestion of the pain and damage left behind. Falling stars cross the sky while distant crosses evoke sacrifice, loss, and finality.

Inspired by The Plimsouls song of the same name, A Million Miles Away captures the moment when love hasn't simply disappearedit is being swallowed by the distance between two people as one walks away.

Series: A World On Fire
Medium: Photography-Based Digital Art
Source: Original photography and digitally composed imagery by Brandon Lake
Musical Inspiration: A Million Miles Away The Plimsouls

Beautiful Disaster

Part of the A World On Fire series, Beautiful Disaster explores the strange coexistence of beauty and destruction within a relationship coming apart. At the center of a burning city, a figure dances among the flames as the world surrounding her collapsesseemingly at home within the chaos.

Religious imagery, a burning heart, a demonic figure, and a world literally on fire surround the dancer, creating a landscape where love, judgment, blame, and destruction become intertwined. The contrast between graceful movement and devastation reflects the contradiction at the heart of the piece: something can remain beautiful even as everything built around it is being destroyed.

Inspired by 311's song of the same name, Beautiful Disaster captures the moment when love and destruction become almost impossible to separate.

Series: A World On Fire
Medium: Photography-Based Digital Art
Source: Original photography and digitally composed imagery by Brandon Lake
Musical Inspiration: Beautiful Disaster 311

As The World Falls Down

Part of the A World On Fire series, As The World Falls Down transforms the end of a relationship into a surreal journey across an open sea. A sinking boat drifts toward the horizon, leaving behind a trail of scattered hearts that slowly disappear into the watera visual representation of love breaking apart and being lost along the way.

A water dragon rises from the ocean while fire burns across the sky, bringing opposing elements of water and flame into the same landscape. In the distance, the smoking silhouette of Mount Etna grounds the otherwise dreamlike scene in something real, while the surrounding symbols suggest transformation, destruction, and the uncertain journey that follows an ending.

Inspired by David Bowie's As the World Falls Down, the piece captures the feeling of watching a shared world disappear while continuing forward into whatever comes next.

Series: A World On Fire
Medium: Photography-Based Digital Art
Source: Original photography and digitally composed imagery by Brandon Lake
Musical Inspiration: As the World Falls Down David Bowie

Full Circle explores the cycle of love, life, loss, and death—the connections we form, the things we lose, and the pieces of us that remain behind. Hearts, trees, human figures, and celestial imagery move between life and decay, intimacy and isolation, beginnings and endings.

The series reflects the idea that nothing truly exists in a straight line. We love, we lose, we change, and eventually we find ourselves returning to where we began—only different than we were before.

:full circle

Hysteria

Hysteria is the first chapter of a three-part series exploring the life and eventual dissolution of a relationship. Built around an original photograph of a massive tree on the USC campus, the tree becomes the central symbol connecting all three worksa living representation of something deeply rooted, growing, and intertwined.

Here, the tree is at its most expansive, stretching outward into a vast cosmic landscape while emerging from a glowing heart below. A solitary angelic figure watches from the distance as roots, stars, and celestial forms surround the tree, suggesting connection, devotion, and the complicated emotional forces that bind two lives together.

As the series progresses, the tree itself changesbecoming darker and diminished in Where Did You Sleep Last Night? before reaching its final transformation in Within You. Inspired by Def Leppard's Hysteria, this first piece represents the relationship while it is still alive: beautiful, overwhelming, deeply rooted, and already carrying the tension of what will eventually follow.

Series: Hysteria Where Did You Sleep Last Night? Within You
Medium: Photography-Based Digital Art
Source: Original photograph of a tree at USC, digitally transformed and composed by Brandon Lake
Musical Inspiration: Hysteria Def Leppard

Where Did You Sleep Last Night?

Where Did You Sleep Last Night? is the second chapter of a three-part series exploring connection, separation, and the dissolution of a relationship. Following Hysteria, the piece captures the moment when emotional chaos gives way to distancewhen two people once deeply connected begin to exist in separate worlds.

A solitary figure stands at the edge of a cliff beside a darkened tree, a recurring symbol that evolves throughout all three works in the series. Once expansive and alive, the tree has become a shadow of itself. Across the divide, another figure appears suspended within the cosmos, connected only by a beam of light stretching between them. The physical distance becomes emotional distance, capturing the moment just before something once shared finally breaks apart.

Inspired by Nirvana's Where Did You Sleep Last Night?, the piece forms the second movement of a visual story that begins with Hysteria and concludes with Within You.

Series: A World On Fire
Medium: Photography-Based Digital Art
Source: Original photography and digitally composed imagery by Brandon Lake
Musical Inspiration: Where Did You Sleep Last Night? Nirvana

L'amour Est Mort

L'amour Est Mort explores the moment when love survives emotionally even after the relationship itself has died. Beneath a luminous blue moon, an angel embraces and kisses a skeletal, horned figuretwo opposing figures connected by intimacy despite representing seemingly incompatible worlds.

Their hearts remain illuminated, but differently: one burns with life while the other appears fractured and consumed. The Korean word grief or sorrow written across the skull reinforces the idea that what remains after love is not necessarily hatred, but mourning.

The angel and demon imagery blurs the traditional boundary between good and evil. Neither figure is presented simply as hero or villain. Instead, they remain locked together beneath the moon, suggesting that love, loss, beauty, darkness, and grief can exist simultaneously.

L'amour Est Mort Love Is Dead is ultimately less about the absence of love than the painful contradiction of still carrying it after something has ended.

Medium: Photography-Based Digital Art
Artist: Brandon Lake

Within You

Within You is the final chapter of a three-part series tracing the life and death of a relationship through the changing image of a tree.

The once-living tree has become barren and burned, its branches holding dead roseseach rose representing a year of marriage. Small fires mark the total years spent together, turning the tree itself into a timeline of a shared life. At its base sits a gravestone bearing the wedding date, transforming what once represented a beginning into a marker of something that has ended.

Above the tree, a glowing heart is being pulled toward a black hole. Rather than simply breaking, the heart is disappearingdrawn into something from which nothing returns.

The tree that once represented growth and connection in Hysteria, and stood at the edge of separation in Where Did You Sleep Last Night?, has reached its final state. What remains are the physical traces of what existed: years, memories, scars and the remnants of love.

Inspired by David Bowie's Within You, the piece closes the trilogy not with anger, but with the finality of loss and the recognition that something can end while still remaining permanently within you.

Series: Hysteria Where Did You Sleep Last Night? Within You
Medium: Photography-Based Digital Art
Musical Inspiration: Within You David Bowie