A Beautiful Nightmare: From Bruises To Brush strokes

By Antonio Pantoja

There’s an Instagram account called @abandoneddiffusion that I stumbled on by accident — or maybe not. The images stopped me cold. Strange, dreamlike landscapes. Dead-eyed figures standing in places that felt real and unreal at the same time. Like stills from a movie that doesn’t exist — or maybe one that exists in some other world, just a layer beneath ours.

Each post came with a short story — surreal, poetic, and wild. They read like ghost stories told by a man who’s lived through too many midnights. But what really struck me was the location tags and captions: Kentucky. Kentucky? I thought, This guy must be writing fiction. Some European artist making up weird fever dreams about small-town America, about bourbon-soaked backroads and ghost towns filled with secrets.

But the more I read, the more it felt like… he knew. Not just the scenery. He knew the people. The grief. The sense of being overlooked. The quiet hauntings. And so I reached out — purely as a fan. Just to tell him his work moved me.

That’s when he told me his name: Todd Rigney.

And everything clicked.

Because I already knew who Todd Rigney was.

He’s the author of Found, the novel that inspired the cult horror film of the same name. A brutal, unforgettable coming-of-age story soaked in trauma and blood. A film that, for many of us in the indie horror world, has lingered like a scar you’re not supposed to talk about in polite company. I’d seen it. I’d admired it. But I never connected that Todd — the writer — with the artist behind Abandoned Diffusion.

That dissonance is kind of perfect, though. Because Todd’s entire body of work lives in that quiet collision: beauty and rot, nostalgia and nightmare.

And here’s the thing about Found — even that story came to life by accident. Or fate. Or whatever force lives between those two things. Director Scott Schirmer was working in a print shop when he noticed Todd’s novel being printed. He picked it up, read it, and said, “This has to be a film.” That one, strange moment — one person noticing what others overlooked — changed both their lives. And it gave birth to something haunting and unforgettable.

I think about that a lot. How easy it would’ve been for Found to go unread. For Abandoned Diffusion to stay anonymous. But something in Todd’s work refuses to stay buried.

He told me he was bullied as a kid — not just teased, but deeply,repeatedly hurt. The kind of bullying that makes you questionyour reflection. The kind that pushes people toward silence orrage or disappearance. But Todd didn’t disappear. He transformed.He took that pain, that alienation, and built entire worlds out of it.Beautiful, terrifying worlds. His boss at Citation Labs enabled and encouraged him to push his art — to take that same pain and make something lasting from it.

His images aren’t just aesthetic — they’re echoes. Each one is a memory warped into myth. Each caption is a whisper from someone who survived something. You can feel it in every pixel. The kind of work that doesn’t scream to be seen — it just waits. And when you finally look at it, it’s like it’s already been looking at you. 

The truth is, I’d admired Todd’s work twice — once without knowing who he was, and once after. But that’s how a lot of the best art works. It finds you when you need it, even if you don’t know what you’re looking at. You just feel it. 

We talk a lot about Kentucky as a place of bourbon and basketball and bluegrass. But there’s something else here, too. Something darker, richer. A lineage of artists who turn pain into poetry. Who aren’t afraid to make something unsettling, because they know that’s where the truth lives. 

Todd Rigney is one of those artists. And if you haven’t seen his work, you should. Not because it’s trending. Not because it’s safe. 

But because it’s what nightmares look like when you finally decide to face them — and find something beautiful staring back. 

Todd and I have a lot of collaborative work planned — and it’s going to be dark. 

It’s going to be strange. 

And it’s going to be beautiful.