Archetypal

Setting the physicality of our exterior worlds layered with the more invisible language though which we experience this Thing called Life, I begin giving in to curiosity with the more concrete life-source materials. With the series “Archetypal,” I make direct photographic imagery of these essential materials both in a metaphorical sense by calling to those myths and histories that act as a thread to bind our humanity, and also by using the substances that I consider a basis of our root makeup such as my own blood or reconstituted hemoglobin, as well as common tools/vehicles for writing and language such as graphite and pen. It’s a foundation on which to build an understanding and appreciation of the one world we have, our ‘Pale Blue Dot’ – and everything within it. I love this seemingly stark contrast between the world of the anatomical, and that of the emotional/spiritual/psychological - the world of our daily experience. We all seem to have an unspoken agreement to almost ignore this duality, because to bring it to the forefront might be to shatter our reality. Each image extracts and borrows from long-existing tales and characters and creatures from cultural histories around the globe; I then layer over those ‘remnants’ that I have found within the histories that remain still recorded among us, a layer of this Language I refer to. Within it I use the ink that binds all life together — a celebratory and rather fascinated act. Each image is focused on fairly transparent reference to the story/character/creature that remained slightly more isolated than after it became transcended and joined with this act of writing and drawing. In this submission I have included the Great White Stag, a derivative of the Stag [ the Elk ], and the well-known Phoenix bird. Through this work I hope to explore the playful, hopeful and compassionate flaws and perfections of humanity and also blurrier complexities like fear and the dream state, waking or otherwise. Today we place much emphasis on our ability to utilize logic, to utilize the invisible consciousness we have so carefully developed. But the mind and body will never be separate; they are symbiotic - and in this way I am trying to bring our attention across the border between that which is our daily invisible experience, and to the majesty that is Nature and that is our physical being. These are substances that make up our physicality and thus in my view, the “language” of our consciousness as well - the foundation on which each of our unique experiences through the world rest; just because there are physical and also unseen ways in which we connect with the world and the cosmos surrounding us, does not at all mean they are unrelated. I am preoccupied with this seeming contrast between the world of the anatomical, and that of the emotional/spiritual/psychological - the world of our daily experience. For me this is not a contrast at all, but two parts of a whole in harmony, on a micro and macro level, connecting further out into the universe we so far know. The mind and body will never be separate; they are symbiotic. Beneath our conscious we are so much and yet something nearly invisible - Beneath our Humanity, our Stories, we are Blood, Sinew, Synapse, Bone.