Pacman Unfinished

Medium: Mixed Media on Wood
Size: 3ft x 2.5ft
Creation Date: 2023
Collection: Playful Abstraction

Pacman Unfinished (2023) is a playful excavation of nostalgia, disruption, and visual memory. This 40 x 30 inch mixed media painting on wood, part of the Playful Abstraction Collection, reimagines a cultural icon through the lens of abstraction and incompletion.

Built on a carved wood surface, the piece features partially rendered circular arcs, interrupted grid marks, and high-contrast pops of yellow, red, and ultramarine. It’s immediately suggestive of retro arcade design — yet the expected form never fully arrives. It glitches, stalls, veers. The image isn’t broken; it’s becoming.

I created Pacman Unfinished as a kind of visual remix. It reflects how memory — especially of childhood — is rarely whole. We remember outlines, rhythms, aesthetics. Not the logic, but the energy. This painting leans into that fragmentation, finding joy in the undone.

The work connects conceptually with the glitch-art influence of Cory Arcangel, where digital imperfection becomes artistic intention. Like Arcangel, I’m drawn to cultural imagery not to celebrate it, but to question how it lingers, loops, and warps.

Pacman Unfinished is not a tribute. It’s a reframe — a look at how symbols mutate over time and how play can become its own kind of abstraction.

As part of the Playful Abstraction Collection, this piece reminds us that not all resolutions need finishing. Sometimes, the interruption is the most honest part.