About
When I look back, the seeds of Quasiland were planted long before the project itself existed.
The characters first appeared as fragments — vague sketches, loose doodles, unfinished cartoons, and isolated figures scattered across old drawings, three-panel strips, and forgotten ideas.
They emerged randomly and without structure, existing independently of one another with no clear world to inhabit.
For a long time, their home was simply a collection of disconnected boxes.
Over time, those fragments began to evolve into something larger as a fictional and narrative universe shaped by atmosphere, symbolism, memory, and imagination.
Quasiland became the place where these characters could finally exist together: a world built from visual storytelling, mystery, transformation, and interconnected histories.
Each piece within Quasiland forms part of that unfolding world — an exploration of character, narrative, and the emotional spaces between fiction and reality.
The Deeper Story
As the project evolved, Quasiland slowly transformed from a loose archive of characters into a living narrative world with its own internal logic,histories, environments, and emotional atmosphere. What once existed as isolated sketches gradually became interconnected — figures began to develop relationships, recurring symbols emerged, and fragments of story started linking together across different works.
The world of Quasiland is intentionally suspended somewhere between fiction, memory, dream, and observation. Its inhabitants often exist within uncertain spaces — places shaped as much by emotion and symbolism as by physical reality. Some characters appear lost, displaced, searching, or transformed; others seem to carry traces of forgotten histories or unresolved narratives that continue unfolding from one piece to the next.
A development in Quasiland rarely begins with a fixed narrative or a fully planned composition. Most artefacts and character adventures emerge gradually through fragments — loose sketches, unfinished ideas, visual experiments, textures, symbols, or isolated characters that slowly begin forming unexpected connections, environments that continue to shape the evolving mythology of Quasiland.
Rather than presenting fixed stories with definitive meanings, Quasiland is designed as an open narrative universe — one that invites interpretation, curiosity, and personal connection. Each artwork acts as both a standalone moment and part of a larger evolving mythology, allowing viewers to encounter the world gradually through atmosphere, detail, and visual storytelling.
The Process
The development of Quasiland rarely begins with a fixed narrative or a fully planned composition. Most works emerge gradually through fragments — loose sketches, unfinished ideas, visual experiments, textures, symbols, or isolated characters that slowly begin forming unexpected connections.
Characters are often discovered rather than designed. Many begin as instinctive drawings or small visual moments that evolve over time through repetition, reinterpretation, and narrative layering. As new pieces are created, relationships between characters, locations, and symbols begin to surface naturally, allowing the world of Quasiland to expand in unpredictable ways.
The process itself moves between illustration, painting, storytelling, and world-building. The materials are digital, acrylics, watercolour and gouache. Some works originate from written ideas or imagined histories, while others are driven purely by atmosphere, emotion, or
visual intuition. Rather than working toward strict realism or linear narratives, the focus is placed on creating spaces that feel psychologically and emotionally alive.
Recurring themes of memory, displacement, transformation, identity, and symbolic environments continue to shape the evolving mythology of Quasiland. Each new piece contributes another fragment to the larger fictional landscape — an ongoing archive of interconnected stories, characters, and imagined histories still unfolding.
The Author Artist
Through paintings, artefacts, and visual narratives, Dean Reeve works as an Author Artist documenting the evolving world of Quasiland. The world that began as fragments.
For many years, strange characters, symbols, and small stories appeared in sketches, cartoons, paintings, and passing ideas — disconnected pieces of a world that had not yet fully revealed itself. Over time, those fragments slowly gathered into the evolving narrative world that became Quasiland.
My creative background has been shaped less by formal academic art education and more by a lifetime spent drawing, painting, designing, making, and performing. From an early age I attended private art lessons while continuing to develop through constant drawing and painting alongside engineering-based trades, technical drawing, spray painting, music, and professional creative work.
Alongside selling artwork for many years, I also created weekly strip cartoons for a newspaper over a two-year period, an experience that deepened my interest in character, narrative, and the gradual unfolding of imagined worlds. Playing in pub rock bands likewise influenced my approach to atmosphere, rhythm, and storytelling — elements that continue to shape the spirit of Quasiland today.
These different disciplines continue to influence the way I
approach art — balancing imagination with structure, instinct with
craftsmanship, and storytelling with visual form.
The Quasiland project explores fictional landscapes, wandering characters, mysterious artefacts, and unseen magical pulls that guide creatures toward places, objects, and experiences they do not fully
understand themselves. Within this world are the Thumbmen, the Headmins, the Bulbs, woodland travellers, the strange creatures of the Mingus Peninsular and many other inhabitants whose stories unfold gradually through paintings, maps, relics, and visual storytelling.
Rather than creating isolated images, I see Quasiland as an expanding mythological atlas — somewhere between dream, folklore, humour, and adventure. Each artwork acts as a discovered fragment from a larger world: part memory, part invention, and part exploration.
At its core, Quasiland is about curiosity, wonder, movement, and the enduring pull toward imagination.