Affinity Photo surrealist effect creation ? Go to the layer menu and make new and then fill the design with a basic gradient (black and white) using the gradient tool. Set the style in the top left to radial and apply.
Once you have your design, go to the rectangular marquee tool and also set the mode for the selections to add (top left) and then add some thin stripes of selections to the gradient. Copy and paste via the edit menu and now you have those thin stripes separated from the original design. You can make all kinds of amazing selections with sharp edges (feather 0) and blurriness (feather greater than 20 etc) and add them together
Go to the fx at the bottom of the layers panel and set a 3D and bevel effect to the artwork. You can then go to the layer menu and rasterize and set the fx option to off.
You can now use the layer menu again and use the duplicate linked command and repeat that over and over to generate multiple entries in the panel. The feature means any filters etc applied are duplicated in all of the entries. You can scale and rotate and they are not linked.
Select one of the entries in the center of the image (and avoid going over the edge with it otherwise you will end up with sharp lines cutting off the design). Go to the filter menu and distort and deform and add some pins / handles to the selected artwork and drag them to distort the design in countless ways. Click OK. You can then duplicate that, perhaps re-size etc and then also if you wish, apply the deform again via the filter menu repeat.