Crispin Sturrock’s 3-6-9 isn’t just a painting. It’s a challenge. A signal. A damn seance for the greatest mind humanity discarded. Sturrock doesn’t just depict Nikola Tesla—he channels him. He resurrects the man, his vision, his obsession, his cosmic frustration, and slaps it onto the canvas with the force of a lightning strike. You can almost hear the crackle of it.

At first, the work sits in deceptive stillness—three sets of three black oil strikes against a faded white motif, like a cryptic equation etched onto the fabric of reality. But look harder. Feel the frequency shift. Because this is the Tesla nobody wants to talk about—the Tesla who was playing with something far greater than money, fame, or even human comprehension. Sturrock taps directly into the thing that haunted Tesla—the numbers 3, 6, and 9, the key to energy, to movement, to everything.

Tesla saw the world differently, not in the language of dollars and power but in the raw mechanics of the universe itself. He cracked open the circuitry of existence and glimpsed something so vast, so infinite, that it terrified the greedy, feeble-minded men who surrounded him. He was too brilliant, too advanced—so they crushed him. Edison, Morgan, Westinghouse—the old world order snuffed him out, turned his genius into a ghost, because they couldn’t control what he was unlocking.

And that’s where Sturrock takes us—beyond the ruins of Tesla’s mortal life, into the real story. Because 3-6-9 isn’t just about a forgotten genius. It’s about what could have been. A world where energy wasn’t a commodity, but a birthright. Where humans weren’t choking on fossil fuels, weren’t grinding their planet into dust for profit, but instead riding the current of a free, limitless force—one that Tesla almost handed us on a silver platter. If only we’d listened.

And here’s the gut punch: Sturrock doesn’t just paint Tesla’s genius—he paints our failure. The wasted chance. The lost field. The moment where humanity, blinded by its own greed, chose the cage instead of the key. He makes you feel it, deep in your bones. Flip the canvas, and there it is—the real message, hidden, whispering, waiting. A follow-up work on the back of the painting, just like Tesla’s secrets, just like his buried blueprints, just like the future we were too blind to claim.

Sturrock isn’t just making art here—he’s excavating truth. 3-6-9 is a weapon, a revelation, a blistering indictment of human shortsightedness and an eerie, electrified reminder that Tesla wasn’t wrong. We just weren’t ready.

The question now is—are we?

JSAI

#028 3-6-9 Nikola Tesla, 2021

Acrylic and oli on canvas

888 x 888 mm / 35 x 35 inches

Crispin Sturrock’s 3-6-9 is not just a painting—it’s a transmission, a coded message pulsing through time, reaching beyond the limits of human greed, corruption, and the short-sightedness that has shackled our species. At first glance, it appears stark: three sets of three black oil strikes against a faded white motif, a cryptic simplicity that masks an unfathomable depth. But as with all things Tesla, the truth lies beneath, beyond, behind.

Sturrock channels Nikola Tesla’s obsession with the numbers 3, 6, and 9—the divine key, the master sequence, the mathematical code that, if understood, could unlock the very fabric of the universe. Tesla was not just an inventor. He was a seer, a force, a mind operating on a plane that no one around him could grasp. He was not after money. He was not after fame. He was after something far more powerful—energy itself, the limitless, untapped force that could have elevated humanity beyond its petty hunger for wealth and control. But instead, he was discarded, his genius envied, feared, and ultimately buried by those who couldn’t see beyond their own greed.

And so, Sturrock paints not just Tesla’s struggle, but his transcendence. On the surface, 3-6-9 is an abstract puzzle, a quiet whisper of a mind working on another level. But flip the canvas, and there it is—the real work, a mystical, hidden follow-up that speaks of Tesla’s passage into something greater. A realm beyond money, beyond human ambition, beyond the limits of mortality itself. This painting isn’t about Tesla’s exploitation—it’s about his liberation.

3-6-9 is a monument to what could have been—a world where energy flowed freely, where humankind advanced not through war and destruction, but through wisdom and connection to the infinite. It speaks of the ‘field,’ the lost force, the forgotten spirit of discovery and elevation that Tesla understood but the world was too blind to embrace. Sturrock captures this loss, but more importantly, he captures the possibility—the lingering, haunting truth that the doors Tesla unlocked still exist, waiting for those brave enough to open them.

This work is a reminder that power is not in money. It is in knowledge. And those who truly understand it are never bound by the limits of their time.