Energy generated from unseen forces, creatures, and inanimate objects not only fascinated the female Surrealist Peter Miller, but in a real sense, formed or informed the content for all of her art.

She was intrinsically animistic - believing all natural things animate and inanimate to have a soul - which corresponded with her Surrealist predilection for the unseen. Miller knew that it was real - that nature is alive. She also knew asa a female artist she could masterfully express it.

The Sideways Enchantment (Benthos) is an early and extraordinarily surreal image in Miller's oeuvre. The artist rarely titled her works, but we know from the inscription on the reverse that the painting depicts a benthos; a community of organisms such as mollusks, worms, or fungi that live in or around the seabed. The main creature of the composition is eerily humanoid, standing on two legs, and with a man-like face delineated by flat fragments of intense colour. This grotesque being is surrounded by other organic shapes, floating amidst the dark, ethereal colours of the ocean floor. It is a radical and unconstrained work, anticipating images such as Judit Reigl's Ils ont soif insatiable de l'infini, 1950.