Greg Bromley’s “Cosmic Wormhole,” a work that explores hidden realities and personal experiences

Transmission 204: Interview with Greg Bromley

Glasgow-based self-taught artist Greg Bromley addresses themes of personal tragedy, psychiatric investigation, and quantum reality in his artwork. Despite an early passion for drawing, he pursued a career in social work, spending over 20 years in the field. The emotional toll of this work eventually led him to painting as a source of comfort. His artistic journey evolved to include painting, collage, and mixed media, often repurposing earlier works into new creations: this testifies to self-reflection in the process of flux. His self understanding of himself and his evolutionary stage allowed him to create intricate, sequential illustrations.

Fascinated by mythology, cosmology, and the subconscious, Bromley constructs chaotic compositions filled with multi-limbed figures, disembodied eyes, and symbolic language. His work focuses on individuals, mental illness, altered states of consciousness, and the human condition. These subjects are filtered through surrealism, liminal realms, and shapeshifting entities.

He has also earned his certification as an art psychotherapist, which allows him to further incorporate his knowledge of mental health into his artistic pursuits. His work has appeared in publications such as Trebuchet Magazine and Raw Vision. Through a varied approach, he continues to navigate the intersections of art, psychology, and personal narrative, offering insight into the complexities of human experience.

Greg Bromley‘s official site | Facebook | Instagram

Since you decided to be an artist, what challenges have you faced at the beginning, and how have you overcome them? Can you tell us about your beginning?

My journey as an artist began as a compulsion rather than a conscious decision. The art-making process emerged from a period of profound personal and professional transformation. After a long career in social work—where I was immersed in the stories and struggles of vulnerable individuals—I reached a point where the weight of vicarious trauma demanded release. Art became that release, a way to externalize complex emotions and confront the fragments of experience that haunted me.

I began on large wooden boards, attacking the surface with energy and intuition, creating forms and figures that seemed to emerge from the chaos. It wasn’t about creating something beautiful or easily categorized—it was about tapping into something primal and raw. Over time, this instinctive approach evolved into a distinct visual language—fragmented figures, wave-like lines, layered textures—all expressing the tension between chaos and order, transformation and stasis.

The journey has been one of relentless curiosity and creative momentum. Over more than a decade, I have refined my techniques, learned from stylistic dead ends, and developed a visual lexicon that is entirely my own. I taught myself to work on smaller scales without losing the intensity of expression, mastered the balance between structure and entropy, and expanded the narrative universe of my work.

I have always trusted my intuition, following the forms and figures that emerge without forcing them into familiar shapes. My process is a dialogue between intention and accident, between the conscious and the subconscious. This freedom has allowed me to cultivate an authentic style—unfiltered, immersive, and unapologetically my own.

My audience began to grow organically, particularly on social media, where people were drawn to the raw intensity of my imagery. Being championed by the UK organization Outsidein was a pivotal moment—it opened doors and connected me with a wider audience. But the core of my work remains the same—an exploration of transformation, the fragmented self, and the strange beauty of instability. I have never sought to conform. Instead, I have built a world that is uniquely mine.

Your use of space is an intentional full narrative. You developed signature elements in your own style. What drove you to develop your recurring motifs, techniques? Were they happy accidents that have become integral to your visual language or did you get an epiphany?

My recurring motifs did not arrive as a single revelation—they emerged through a process of relentless, intuitive exploration. Figures fragmented like shattered reflections, eyes that pierce and observe, particle spikes and wave-like lines that hint at the quantum nature of existence—these were not simply aesthetic choices, but visual echoes of the themes I wrestled with. They are fragments of the self, elements of a hidden reality that I have always sensed beneath the surface.

My years in social work profoundly influenced this. Bearing witness to the lives, struggles, and hidden traumas of others left an indelible mark. My figures are not just reflections of my own psyche but impressions of a universe populated by invisible wounds, secret struggles, and unspoken stories. I have always been fascinated by the concept of hidden realities—those vast landscapes of the mind, sometimes hidden from others, sometimes even from ourselves. This sense of the hidden and the fragmented naturally aligned with the concept of the quantum wave function—multiple possibilities coexisting, realities superimposed.

The motifs—fragmented faces, floating heads, oscillating waveforms—are a language of their own. They speak of instability, transformation, and the constant interplay between chaos and form. They arrived not through conscious planning but through a commitment to exploration—layering, obscuring, and revealing, always allowing chance to play its role.

Moments of happy accident were crucial—an unexpected mark that felt significant, a texture that suggested hidden depth. These were not mere mistakes but revelations—windows into something deeper. And this process was enriched by my training as an art psychotherapist from 2021 to 2023. It was a slow-motion epiphany, an awakening to the depth of my own symbolic language. Through this period, I learned to understand my own creative universe more clearly, embracing the idea that my work is a visual mythology—one that continues to evolve with each piece.

“The liminal is a realm of ambiguity, a place where identities blur, where certainty dissolves. It is where the self is not fixed but in flux”

Looking back at your artistic journey, can you pinpoint a moment or experience that fundamentally shifted your creative perspective or approach?

One of the most transformative moments in my journey was the realization that I was painting the fragmented self—not just as an aesthetic choice, but as a reflection of the human experience. This understanding emerged gradually, as I noticed my compositions consistently depicted fractured figures, multiple faces, and shifting forms. I came to see these images not just as expressions of my own psyche but as windows into a universal truth—our minds are not singular but multifaceted, our identities fluid.

A second pivotal shift was the decision to work on a smaller scale. Moving from large, time-consuming pieces to smaller works was a revelation. It forced me to be more precise, to condense narrative into tighter spaces, and to develop a rigorous technique that allowed for the chaos to be contained. This change was not just practical—it was a philosophical shift, embracing immediacy and the electric charge of spontaneous creation.

But perhaps the most profound transformation was my decision to embrace chaos rather than resist it. Instead of trying to force my work into familiar shapes, I allowed it to be what it needed to be—chaotic, fragmented, evolving. This gave me the freedom to explore without fear, to see each piece as a conversation rather than a fixed statement.

Your paintings inspire awe and have a special fusion of power and fragility. How may these feelings be evoked and graphically represented?

Power and fragility are not opposites in my work—they are dance partners. I evoke them through a tension between contrasts. My characters are often bold, shape-shifting entities that pulse with energy, yet they inhabit ghostly, liminal spaces—what I think of as the ‘quantum ether.’ They emerge with intensity only to dissolve, fragmented and spectral, as if caught between worlds.

The power is in the raw, kinetic energy of the marks—the fierce, almost aggressive strokes, the confident linework that slices through the composition with intent. It is the sheer presence of the figures, their forceful emergence from the surface, pushing through chaotic textures and layered forms. Power is the visual roar of existence, the refusal to be ignored.

But fragility is always there, interwoven with this intensity. It is found in the incomplete—forms that begin but never fully resolve, lines that fade into nothing, colors that bleed away. It is the ghostly, ephemeral quality that haunts the composition—the way figures seem to flicker, caught between becoming and disappearing. Fragility is the suggestion of absence within presence, the hint of dissolution in the midst of emergence.

My characters embody this duality—they are not static beings but shifting presences, forever in flux. They exist in a state of superposition, like quantum particles—powerful and fragile at once, visible and invisible, present and absent. This reflects a fundamental truth of the human experience—that strength and vulnerability are not separate, but interdependent. It is through this dance between power and fragility that my work captures the tension of existence itself.

“Vicarious trauma + ih/2π δψ/δt = Hψ × Jabberwocky = bestiary of the hidden reality.”

Your artwork weaves together cosmology and mythology — how do you reconcile the scientific vastness of the universe with the symbolic intimacy of myth?

I see cosmology and mythology as two sides of the same coin—both are ancient and modern attempts to understand the unknown. Mythology is humanity’s oldest storytelling, our way of conjuring meaning from the chaos of existence. It is where gods are born from stars and monsters emerge from shadows. Cosmology, by contrast, is our most advanced language for exploring the same mysteries—galaxies spinning in the void, particles flickering in and out of existence, the quantum dance that underpins reality.

But while their methods differ, their purpose is the same—both strive to map the infinite, to make sense of a cosmos that dwarfs us. Myth is the language of the soul, a way of feeling the universe, while science is the language of the mind, a way of measuring it. One is visceral, the other is precise—but they are not separate. They intersect in how we experience reality.

In my work, this fusion is ever-present. Stars become eyes that watch, constellations become faces that shift and morph, and the wave function—the quantum field of all possibilities—becomes the realm where my figures emerge and dissolve. My characters exist within a mythic cosmology where the personal and the cosmic are one and the same. The vast emptiness of space is not a void—it is a stage for human drama, a canvas for the eternal struggle between order and chaos, identity and dissolution.

I do not see the scientific and the symbolic as opposites but as collaborators. Mythology gives emotion to the cosmos, while cosmology gives structure to our myths. In this way, my work is a place where quantum mechanics and ancient archetypes share the same canvas, each revealing something about the other.

Is your art a form of self-discovery, or more a ritual of self-invention? How has your perception of the self changed through the act of making art? Do you ever feel like your art “teaches” you something, like it has its own mythology?

My art is both a process of self-discovery and a ritual of self-invention. It is a mirror and a mask—a space where I confront aspects of myself I might otherwise avoid, and a realm where I can become something new. When I begin a piece, I rarely know what will emerge. Forms and figures rise from the chaos, shifting, mutating, dissolving. It is as though I am watching my own subconscious tell stories I have not yet heard.

In this sense, my work teaches me. It reveals patterns, symbols, and narratives that I did not consciously plan. Faces emerge, fragment, and reassemble. Figures hover between presence and absence. Symbols I cannot fully decipher appear and reappear. Over time, I have come to see these motifs as a personal mythology—a visual language that speaks in the dialect of the subconscious.

But my art is also an act of self-invention. Each painting is a threshold, a point of transformation where I can explore other aspects of identity. The figures I paint are not just representations of my inner world—they are avatars, shapeshifters, embodiments of ideas and emotions I am trying to understand. In this sense, my work allows me to become more than I am, to inhabit the liminal, to oscillate between multiple selves.

Over the years, this process has transformed my perception of the self. I no longer see identity as something fixed, but as something fluid—a quantum state, always in flux, always becoming. My art is a testament to this belief, a visual narrative of a self that is always evolving, always colliding with its own shadows.

Perhaps most profoundly, my work has its own mythology. It is not just my story—it is a place where personal symbols become universal, where private struggles become archetypal. I do not merely create these images; I encounter them. They speak to me in a language of fractured faces, floating heads, and cosmic patterns—visions that emerge from the liminal space between conscious thought and subconscious intuition.

Archetypes are evoked by your artwork. Do you frequently see certain inner images or symbols in your dreams or in your own psyche?

I don’t dream of my figures, but they are always with me—haunting the edges of my consciousness, appearing in flashes of intuition, or emerging unbidden while I work. They are not born from sleep, but from a waking dialogue with the subconscious, where thoughts blur, emotions collide, and fragments of memory weave together.

My figures and symbols are archetypal, but they are not drawn from any single mythology. Instead, they arise from the constant interplay between my inner world and the world I have witnessed. Decades spent working as a social worker—immersed in the struggles, stories, and traumas of others—have deeply influenced this imagery. Faces fragment because identity is rarely stable. Eyes proliferate because we are always seen, judged, or lost in observation. Forms shift and dissolve because existence itself is unstable.

In many ways, they are echoes of Jungian archetypes—The Shadow, The Shapeshifter, The Wounded Healer—but they do not conform to rigid definitions. They are not borrowed from a textbook of symbols; rather, they are living entities shaped by my own experiences and psyche. The Shapeshifter, in particular, is a recurring presence—an embodiment of fluid identity, a figure caught between forms, reflecting the instability of the self. The Shadow emerges as a fractured presence, a reminder of the hidden, repressed aspects of the psyche.

I do not see them in dreams, but I feel them as a pressure, a presence. They manifest in moments of reflection, in the silence between thoughts, or in the electric uncertainty of the blank canvas. They are not just symbols—I experience them as forces, as echoes of something ancient and unresolved. Sometimes they feel like fractured memories; other times, they are embodiments of emotions I cannot fully articulate.

In this sense, my work is a form of active dreaming—a state of conscious reverie where these figures are allowed to surface, to take form, to dissolve, and to reform. They are pieces of a puzzle I may never solve, but their presence is undeniable, their mythology ever-expanding.

You frequently create figures in the cycles of re-formation, moments of transformation, visible and invisible, the liminal, the in-between. What draws you to that motif on a personal level?

I am drawn to the liminal because it is the space where transformation happens. It is the threshold, the doorway, the moment of tension between what was and what will be. My life has been marked by periods of intense change—emotionally, professionally, and creatively. I have shifted from a career in social work, navigating the pain and resilience of others, to a full-time art practice where I confront my own inner world. Each transition has left its mark, but it is in the in-between—where nothing is certain and everything is possible—that I feel most alive.

The liminal is a realm of ambiguity, a place where identities blur, where certainty dissolves. It is where the self is not fixed but in flux—fragmenting, reforming, and dissolving, much like the figures in my work. My characters exist in this space of perpetual transformation—caught between being and becoming, visible and invisible. They are beings of flux, embodying a superposition of emotional states—power and fragility, presence and absence, chaos and order.

I am fascinated by this space because it is the birthplace of creativity. It is where the known collides with the unknown, where logic surrenders to intuition, where control is relinquished, and something new can emerge. This is not just a theme in my work—it is the essence of my creative process. My method itself is liminal, an intuitive dance between intention and accident, between the conscious and the subconscious.

On a personal level, the liminal is a reflection of my own experience. I have always felt like I exist in between—between worlds, between identities, between birth and death. Art is the one place where this in-betweenness becomes a strength, a source of infinite possibility. It allows me to explore the instability of the self, the tension between chaos and form, the beauty of what is forever becoming but never fully resolved.

How do you choose the visual grammar — texture, color, pattern — to reflect abstract ideas?

My visual grammar is a consequence of over 10 years of relentless exploration—recycling ideas, techniques, and materials, each iteration building upon the last. My process is not one of scraping or scarring but of layering, blending, and evolving. Each piece is an accumulation, a palimpsest of marks and forms that carry the memory of what came before.

At the heart of this visual language is the ‘quantum ether’—a background space that is never truly empty but teeming with movement, marked by wave-like lines, oscillations, and arrows. These elements are not random—they are a form of visual energy, a way of capturing motion and transformation. The arrows, in particular, are vectors of force, trajectories of thought, or pathways of perception. They create a sense of dynamic flux, of figures caught in the act of becoming.

Embedded within this ether are semi-codified messages—fragments of text that hover at the edge of legibility. I see them as a form of collapsed speech bubble, a visual representation of language that has dissolved into abstraction. These are not readable narratives but suggestions, whispered echoes, thoughts that have taken on symbolic form. They are voices trapped in the ether, messages that resist being fully deciphered.

Color in my work is an emotional current—it is not applied but discovered. I allow color to emerge organically, bleeding, merging, and shifting within the quantum space. It can be a pulse of violent red, a spectral blue that suggests melancholy, or a radiant yellow that cuts through darkness. Color is not simply a decorative choice but a force, a means of intensifying emotion.

Pattern in my work is a form of visual rhythm—a way of imposing order within chaos, but an order that is never stable. Repeated motifs, such as fragmented faces, floating heads, and waveforms, are a kind of visual mantra—recurring symbols that speak of instability, transformation, and the tension between presence and absence.

My visual grammar is a living language—a constantly evolving lexicon where texture, color, and pattern are not merely aesthetic choices but active participants. They are the voice of the work itself, a voice that speaks in contradictions, in whispers and echoes, in fragments that refuse to settle.

In your visual cosmology, do you imagine a structured universe or a chaotic one? Or perhaps something in between? Do you think the cyclical motifs in your work reflect natural rhythms, or are they more about human consciousness?

I see the universe as a dynamic tension between order and chaos—a space where structure and entropy are not opposites but dance partners, each giving rise to the other. My work captures this tension, reflecting both the inherent patterns of nature and the subjective chaos of human consciousness.

I do not believe in a purely structured universe, nor do I see it as entirely chaotic. Instead, I view it as a liminal space—an endless flux where order emerges from chaos and dissolves back into it. This idea is woven into my work through the motifs of waveforms, arrows, and fragmented figures. The waveforms are a direct reference to quantum mechanics—specifically the wave function and quantum fields. The wave function is a mathematical description of a particle’s probability state, existing in a superposition of possibilities until observed. Quantum fields, on the other hand, are the fundamental fabric of reality—fields of energy and potential from which particles and forces emerge. My work captures this duality—the tension between potential and observation, the shift from possibility to form.

Arrows in my compositions represent direction, force, or intention—trajectories of energy within the quantum field. But they are always caught within a space of shifting potential, suggesting movement but never a final destination. The figures themselves exist in this quantum ether, caught in cycles of emergence, dissolution, and reformation.

The cyclical motifs in my work reflect both natural rhythms and human consciousness because I see them as inseparable. The cycles of growth, decay, and transformation are not just biological phenomena—they are psychological truths. Our minds are constantly in motion, caught in loops of thought, memory, and emotion. My figures exist within this quantum ether, where they emerge, dissolve, and reform—mirroring the way our thoughts shift, our identities fragment, and our emotions oscillate.

In this sense, my work is a cosmology of the psyche—an exploration of how we exist in a constant state of flux, balanced between stability and dissolution, presence and absence. It is not just a depiction of the universe but a reflection of the human experience within it—an existence that is both infinite and fragile, defined by cycles of becoming and unbecoming.

Photos and image courtesy of Greg Bromley

Dominique Musorrafiti

Ciao! My name is Dominique. I’m Italian and I’m proud to be a mix. My father was an Italian chemical engineer and high school teacher, with Greek and Polish heritage. My mother is Haitian, she was high school language teacher, with Dominican, Spanish, French, Portuguese, African and Native American heritage. Being a mix makes me appreciate to want to understand different cultures and lifestyles. I grew up in Italy, lived few years in Haiti, travel around main European capitals, lived many years in China, in Spain and UK. Traveling makes me feel that we can learn something from every situation in every part of the world.