In 2023 through 2024 I began to investigate, through studies and small paintings, what I later called the Primal Aesthesis series. Which was inspired by my ever-deepening interest in humans’ connection with nature.
The psychologist Carl Jung, wrote that “the gifts hide behind the wounds.” This quote began to take on a different meaning as, we humans, have both a love and indifferent relationship to our natural world. As we mistreat nature we drift further from our own essence as primal beings, inextricably connected to the natural world.
These works are created to tap into the deep and primal feelings derived from sensory connection to and with nature, and with our ancient mythological past.
In her most recent book Braiding Sweetgrass scientist (botanist), decorated professor, and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, and author Robin Wall Kimmerer notes:
“Sometimes I wish I could photosynthesize so that just by being, just by shimmering at the meadow’s edge or floating lazily on a pond, I could be doing the work of the world while standing silent in the sun.”
— Robin Wall Kimmerer
Biophilia hypothesis is the idea that humans possess an innate tendency to seek connections with nature and other forms of life. The term biophilia was used by German-born American psychoanalyst Erich Fromm in The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (1973), which described biophilia as “the passionate love of life and of all that is alive.”
The term was later used by American biologist Edward O. Wilson in his work Biophilia (1984), which proposed that the tendency of humans to focus on and to affiliate with nature and other life-forms has, in part, a genetic basis. (from Encyclopedia Britannica)
Works in this series are fundamentally inspired by my aesthesis connection with nature, with the primal senses, and how they touch, inform, and color our human experience.
