Titania Sleeping 

Richard Dadd, painted this oil on canvas, Titania Sleeping, while incarcerated at the Bethlem Royal Hospital. Look closely at the sheer amount of work in this painting, especially in the painstakingly rendered figures of the fairies. Dadd spent nine years on another fairy painting, The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke, and spoke of being guided by supernatural forces. Whether or not one believes this explanation, what's undeniable is the material evidence of immense labor. The Pre-Raphaelite aesthetic is evident here, but also a certain obsessive quality; this is painstaking detail raised to another power. Dadd was considered criminally insane and committed matricide; yet, he was also an artist capable of realizing the most intricate and ethereal visions. The material density of paint, applied with focused attention, becomes a portal into his world, offering a complex view of beauty, obsession, and the human condition. This reminds us that creativity resides across the human spectrum.