Drawing, Space, and Mind

Little girls, little boys, teddy bears, dolls, dogs, rabbits, birds, plants, toys, tricycles, planes, tanks, swords, skulls, and architectural ruins—these are just some of the subjects that populate Nils Karsten’s drawings. But these drawings are not merely collections of images; they are charged with psychological intensity. They are funny, coy, creepy, salacious, sinister, playful, sad, noisy, silent, elusive, and confrontational. Yet these attributes, like the images themselves, are never wholly fixed. The drawings seem to exist in a state of radical fluidity, as if the images could shift positions, expand, contract, or even exchange places with entirely new ones. The information within them feels sufficient but not necessary—as though what is present is contingent, and what is absent could just as easily belong. This inherent instability unsettles us. How are we to make sense of this Heraclitean flux?

One way to approach this perplexity is to reconsider the nature of the paper itself—not merely as a surface on which images rest, but as a dynamic mental space in which they move. This is not the flat, stable ground of modernist tradition; it is an open and unbounded field of consciousness. Looking at Karsten’s drawings feels like stepping into a mind at play, as though a door has swung open to reveal an internal landscape teeming with thoughts, memories, and fantasies. But is this space akin to the dreaming mind in sleep? Not quite—dreams occur in unconsciousness, whereas Karsten’s drawings exude a lucid, deliberate awareness. Is it more like daydreaming, where the mind drifts freely but remains conscious? Even this comparison falls short, because here we encounter not just the play of consciousness but also the presence of will.

This paradox—the coexistence of free-flowing mental activity and an underlying, structuring force—is the key to Karsten’s work. On the one hand, we experience a field of consciousness liberated from the habitual norms that constrain our mental landscapes. Images float, shift, and collide in a world where nothing is fixed. On the other hand, we sense an invisible agent orchestrating the composition, a director subtly guiding the apparent spontaneity. The experience is akin to stumbling upon an improvised street performance and mistaking it for real life. The actors may be improvising, but the structure is in place—the unseen writer has set the parameters.

If we accept this analogy, then Karsten’s drawings are not just a mind/space but a mind/space/play—a stage where the characters interact freely, yet under the watchful eye of an unseen presence. This leads us to a deeper question: whose dreams are these? Are the little boys and girls dreaming their own dreams, or are they dreaming Karsten’s? And Karsten—does he dream freely, or is he too shaped by forces beyond himself?

This tension brings us to a fundamental dilemma in the philosophy of mind: do we possess free will, or are our thoughts and actions determined? One view holds that the mind is an emergent property of the brain, a physical object bound by the laws of physics. If this is true, then our choices are ultimately predetermined. Another view argues that this conclusion contradicts our lived experience—we act as though we are free, and we cannot escape the feeling that our decisions are our own. Even if determinism were true, we could never fully inhabit that reality. Imagine sitting in a restaurant, opening a menu, and believing that physics has already dictated your choice of dish. The idea is absurd, and yet the paradox remains: we cannot dismiss the laws of physics, nor can we ignore our persistent sense of agency.

Karsten’s drawings embody this contradiction. They present a mind in motion, seemingly unbound by rules, yet subtly governed by a structuring will. We feel both the exhilaration of boundless possibility and the discomfort of an unseen force shaping what unfolds. Karsten himself acknowledges this duality when he describes his work as evoking a “world where everything is possible,” while simultaneously exploring “the interplay of good and evil.” One phrase suggests freedom; the other implies a structured, opposing order.

Ultimately, the unease we feel in the presence of these drawings does not stem from their psychological oddities, but from something deeper—the quiet realization that they confront us with our own existential predicament. Like the children in Karsten’s images, we must ask ourselves: are we the authors of our own dreams, or are we simply playing out a script written by forces beyond our control? And if we are, then who, or what, is writing that script?Don Eddy 2005/2025