Baroque Medusa

Queen’s Procession: Transforming Intimate Photography into a Living Surreal Landscape

For the past several months, my creative focus has been on editing and publishing through Baroque Medusa Media. Now that those projects are complete, I’ve finally been able to come back to creating art, and I’ve missed it so much. Returning to Abstract Distortions has felt like coming home, allowing me to transform my original photography, memory, and digital manipulation into something entirely new.

Unlike Vajine Springs, which explored landscape through the Coachella Valley, Queen’s Procession became something more intimate. It explores attraction, devotion, labor, and transformation through imagery that exists somewhere between anatomy and nature.

What began as three completely unrelated photographs gradually evolved into a single living composition.

From Anatomy to Procession

Every piece in Abstract Distortions begins with photography.

For Queen’s Procession, that first photograph was a new shot taken of my own vulva, captured specifically for this artwork. Rather than presenting it literally, I digitally manipulated the image using Canva’s Wobble effect before shifting the colors toward warm coppers, ambers, and crimson tones. The anatomy slowly dissolved into an abstract landscape, creating the spiral that would eventually become the foundation of the composition.

As I continued working, the image stopped resembling a body and began feeling like an imagined environment—one waiting for something to inhabit it.

Transforming Frank Sinatra’s Chandelier

The second source photograph came from an entirely different place.

During XOXO Palm Springs last month, I toured Frank Sinatra’s legendary Twin Palms estate. Inside his living room hung a striking chandelier that immediately caught my attention, and I photographed it without knowing how I might eventually use it.

When I returned to the image, I removed the chain and isolated the chandelier from its surroundings. Once separated from the room, it stopped feeling like architecture altogether. It became something organic—a flower, a hive, pollen, or perhaps something that doesn’t quite exist in nature.

I liked leaving that interpretation open. The goal wasn’t to recreate the chandelier but to allow it to transform into something entirely new.

Creating the Colony

The final element began with a single bee.

I didn’t have an original bee photograph in my archive, so I started with a licensed image before digitally manipulating it into multiple variations through changes in scale, rotation, orientation, and placement. Instead of simply copying the same bee throughout the artwork, I wanted the colony to feel alive.

A single bee rests atop the transformed chandelier while the rest travel along the spiral in a quiet procession. Near the bottom, a queen bee emerges, surrounded by her attendants, introducing another layer of movement and narrative without overpowering the abstraction beneath it.

That relationship ultimately inspired the title.

Queen’s Procession isn’t simply about bees. It’s about instinct, attraction, devotion, transformation, and the invisible forces that draw living things toward one another.

Artwork Details

Artist: Baroque Medusa
Title: Queen’s Procession
Series: Abstract Distortions
Medium: Digital illustration created from original photography using photographic manipulation.
Orientation: Portrait
Year: 2026

Original source photographs:

• Self-portrait photograph digitally transformed into the abstract landscape
• Original photograph of Frank Sinatra’s living room chandelier captured during the June 2026 Twin Palms estate tour at XOXO Palm Springs
• Licensed bee image digitally manipulated into multiple variations to create the colony

Available:

• Original digital illustration
• Part of the Abstract Distortions series
• Not currently available as a print