Neal Auch
@nealauch.bsky.social
350 followers 310 following 740 posts
Still life artist. Writer of horror and nonfiction. No AI, NFTs, or similar bullshit. Queer gothy lefty poly weirdo. He/him pronouns. www.nealauch.com
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nealauch.bsky.social
Hello! I'm Neal Auch. I'm an artist, mostly interested in repurposing the philosophy and iconography of 17th-century Dutch still life for these dark times. My art has appeared in galleries and coffee table books; and my clients include Paramount+, Weirdpunk, Grindhouse, and others.

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A floral still life with rotten lemons, bones, and dead flowers. By Neal Auch. A floral still life with rotting lemons and flowers, in addition to coins. By Neal Auch. A vanitas still life with rotting vegetables, bones, and carcasses. By Neal Auch. A still life with dead flowers, a raccoon skull, and lemons. By Neal Auch.
nealauch.bsky.social
Cooking with gas.
arthousesmut.bsky.social
You know that thing where your partner gives all the sperms a name and then you feel really bad about eating them so you just order the veggie burger instead?
Reposted by Neal Auch
Reposted by Neal Auch
nealauch.bsky.social
Going forward, things are gonna get considerably weirder over there...
arthousesmut.bsky.social
Mannequins are Vampires [n.a.2025]
The vampire seductress, fresh from the grave. What's become of her right arm? She turns her head to look for it... There's this idea that the gothic aesthetic is fundamentally about ruined opulence. Victorian mansions and medieval castles were once places associated with wealth and status. Left to crumble into disrepair, these places become gothic. The dead mall trend is a kind of modern gothic aesthetic; it is fundamentally about finding beauty in the decay of what was once associated with commerce, wealth, and abundance.
If we accept this, then we must accept that mannequins are modern vampires. Like vampires, mannequins are suspended between life and death. Life vampires, mannequins seduce their victims. Like vampires, mannequins want to drain your essence (although here "essence" means currency rather than blood). And, of course, just like vampires, all mannequins are bisexual.
Reposted by Neal Auch
nealauch.bsky.social
Note: by default, Bluesky blocks adult content.

You can turn this off by going to "settings" -> "moderation" -> "enable adult content."
nealauch.bsky.social
I made a 2nd account to drop uncensored NSFW art while I'm deciding what this project will be.

@arthousesmut.bsky.social

For now it'll mostly be me practicing lighting / posing with this weird mannequin thingy. But I will move onto human subjects pretty soon. Give it a follow if interested!
nealauch.bsky.social
I can't believe I never noticed this before but it feels intentional, presuming that parable would have been familiar to a Romanian in the 50s, which I have no idea how likely that is one way or another.
nealauch.bsky.social
Like, instead of being a story about someone being alarmist for no good reason, it's about living in a world where you see the wolf plain as day, yell "wolf!" at the top of your lungs, and then the townsfolk just stand around uselessly debating whether or not wolves exist.
nealauch.bsky.social
For all the thought I've given to Ionesco's Rhinoceros, I cannot believe I'm only just now realizing that the story is also constructed to be literally the exact opposite of the boy who cried wolf parable...
nealauch.bsky.social
It's all so frustratingly prudish, lol. Like I get just having a zero nudity policy, but parsing shit like "genitals are okay but not when they're engorged or being used for their intended purpose" just feels weird to me, lol.
nealauch.bsky.social
Wow, I don't think I'd realized how limited the social media options are for explicitly sexual content... Here is fine, apparently, but even Substack and Tumblr are somewhat limiting. I guess here and fetlife and reddit are the exceptions.
nealauch.bsky.social
“God has died, and His death was the birth of the world.“ – Philipp Mainlander
vanitas with roses and crucifix, by neal auch
nealauch.bsky.social
New email this Thursday! I'm gonna talk about Mailander. "God has died," he wrote, "and His death was the birth of the world."
nealauch.bsky.social
Vanitas with Dice, Flowers, and Coins, by Neal Auch
Reposted by Neal Auch
typebarmagazine.bsky.social
"To view our era as unprecedented is both chauvinist and defeatist. It flatters our desire to be special and also our desire to be absolved for our failures." -- Danny Cohen on our (un)exceptional present.

www.typebarmagazine.com/2025/08/29/w...
White Noise, Talk Radio, and Our Unexceptional Present - Typebar Magazine
To view our era as unprecedented is both chauvinist and defeatist.
www.typebarmagazine.com
nealauch.bsky.social
It's weird little bug orgy season, apparently. I actually wrote a body horror story inspired by weird bug orgies a while back: Orange Frenzy l, published in issue 2 of Tenebrous Press' Skull and Laurel magazine.
nealauch.bsky.social
"We are imperfect mortal beings, aware of that mortality even as we push it away, failed by our very complication, so wired that when we mourn our losses we also mourn, for better or for worse, ourselves. As we were. As we are no longer. As we will one day not be at all."

– Joan Didion
vanitas with flowers and lemons by neal auch
nealauch.bsky.social
Light reading for the spooky season.
nealauch.bsky.social
"The presence of death annihilates all superstitions. We are the children of death, and it is death that rescues us from the deceptions of life. In the midst of life he calls us and summons us to him.” – Sadegh Hedayat
vanitas with lemons and coins and teeth by neal auch