"Chthonic Structures" Painting

A force within. A dark emanation.
Hurlak Obscure is a Polish-born painter based in Nottingham, UK.

The work is primarily abstract expressionism. Figures, when they appear, emerge through the act of painting rather than from prior intention. Circular portals and figurative apparitions recur as a central motif, anchoring otherwise intuitive compositions.

The main body of work was produced between 2015 and 2021 — an intensive period yielding over fifty paintings in acrylic and mixed media on canvas, from intimate small formats to large-scale statement works. Painting has continued in considered intervals since, with fewer works, each carrying the weight of what came before — evolving and consciously regressing as each piece requires.

Visual instinct was first shaped in childhood, observing the studio of a grandfather — a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, trained as painter, sculptor, and later designer. The grandfather's career began in the postwar decades; the observation took place during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Sensibility was further formed by extreme music subcultures — death and thrash metal in particular — and their visual languages: typography, album design, the iconography of underground genres.

Music was the first creative outlet. As a guitarist and drummer in Polish metal bands, the foundation was built in extreme music. After relocating to the UK, the British club scene — and dubstep specifically — shifted the trajectory. The fusion produced Substep Infrabass, an electronic music project that pioneered Deathstep: a genre combining extreme metal aesthetics with proto-dubstep. The genre survived its founding and continues to develop today, sustained by a substantial community of producers and listeners.

When the music project entered hiatus, painting became a parallel outlet — operating on the same principle as music: a way to summon and transmit emotion through abstract structure rather than literal representation.

The work draws from a wide range of sources and engages recurring themes: identity and ego, masculinity, mortality, religion and its inversions, futurism and structures of control. Raised in a Polish Catholic context, the artist later moved through periods of questioning and reformulation. Some pieces from the 2016-2018 period emerged through intensive sessions where consciousness, music, and material entered prolonged dialogue — works that documented states rather than illustrated subjects.