Tobias Mud puts people into words. 

Have you ever had a muse?

Did you worship them well enough? They are fickle deities. For me, a muse is a person that inspires me, even when they are just being themselves – radiant.

MUSE ABUSE is an experimental poetry series in which I create portraits of the muses of my life. The format is loosely inspired by Gertrude Stein’s forgotten Dix Portraits where she captured her artist-friends in poetry-portraits. Through non-visual and non-descriptive means I strove to capture the atmosphere of a person rather than just physical features or biographic information.

Either abstract or more narrative, the style of the portrait for each person is different according to my interpretation of who they are. Over the course of the past few months, I subjected my muses to interrogative abuse and wrote twelve word-portraits. MUSE ABUSE will be bundled together in an artbook publication, to be launched at The Grey Space in the Middle in the Hague at the end of June.

Tobias Mud (The Hague)