Beneath the Surface is a collection of artist projects exploring what is hidden, sublimated, or just out of reach, to mark World Mental Health Day on Wednesday, October 10, 2012.

In the very public milieu of the subway platform, visual stories created by six Toronto-based artists will play every 10 minutes on the network of Pattison Onestop’s TTC subway platform screens throughout Toronto from October 6 to October 14, 2012.

With an aim to change the public’s perceptions of mental health, each participating artist has created a series of eight or nine sequential images that tell a particular story, or express their personal interpretation of the project’s theme. Beneath the Surface reveals real and imagined moods, states of mind, obsessions, fears, and joys lying beneath the surface of our individual and collective urban experience.

An unearthly cartoon character, surreal digital landscapes, delicate illustrations, a photo-story, still-life paintings and a powerful collage depict themes of trauma, memory and ideas, the relationship between order and chaos, isolation and connectedness.

These thought-provoking, emotionally charged image series are created by:

• Saraƒin, Subspace, illustration – www.asylumsquad.com
• Catherine Jones, The Red Shoes, photography – www.marmiteontoast.com
• Michael Morbach, Moving Still Life, acrylic abstract
• Annette Seip, Dream Town, digital – www.aseipphotography.com
• STRanger (Sheri Ranger), Brainwashed, collage – www.sheristranger.com
• Jace Tracz, Taking Birth, illustration