Related interests around the subtle body, perception and healing with flowers, plants and stones have led to work with Fogo Island's flora. More information about this can be found at Fieldsong.ca / @fogoessence (instagram)
GOLDTHREAD
This group of exploratory paintings emerged out of an interest in the relationship of the mind/body to nature and image-making, particularly the process of attuning to plant intelligence. For centuries, healers working with plants have understood that in order to access to the wisdom of a plant, one must spend time engaging bodily and 'imaginally' in a multidimensional capacity with their present form. Their forms, like ours, having been been shaped over thousands of years in relationship to their environment, appear to hold particular energetic gestures - a material and immaterial confluence that, looking deeply, describes a process rather than a "thing". Through the poetics of metaphor and image perception, the capacity within the body/mind to employ the imagination for the purpose of discovery, engagement and wisdom in relation to nature, mirrored something I was familiar with in relation to painting, but perhaps overlooked. The analogous relationship between an open process of finding and developing an image in a painting and the ancient practice of 'reading' a plant's gesture was the territory out of which these paintings were made.
Stories, images, and archetypal healing gestures associated with individual flowers growing on Fogo Island became found elements from which the work was constructed. Visual references include historical narratives, children's books, medieval paintings, and everyday things found in the studio. In many, an abstract language or 'signature' (as related to the doctrine of signatures) was found over time through an intuited gestural conversation between two flowers.
Goldthread is the title of the exhibition held at JK Contemporary on Fogo Island in August 2022. It is named after a Fogo wildflower.
This group of exploratory paintings emerged out of an interest in the relationship of the mind/body to nature and image-making, particularly the process of attuning to plant intelligence. For centuries, healers working with plants have understood that in order to access to the wisdom of a plant, one must spend time engaging bodily and 'imaginally' in a multidimensional capacity with their present form. Their forms, like ours, having been been shaped over thousands of years in relationship to their environment, appear to hold particular energetic gestures - a material and immaterial confluence that, looking deeply, describes a process rather than a "thing". Through the poetics of metaphor and image perception, the capacity within the body/mind to employ the imagination for the purpose of discovery, engagement and wisdom in relation to nature, mirrored something I was familiar with in relation to painting, but perhaps overlooked. The analogous relationship between an open process of finding and developing an image in a painting and the ancient practice of 'reading' a plant's gesture was the territory out of which these paintings were made.
Stories, images, and archetypal healing gestures associated with individual flowers growing on Fogo Island became found elements from which the work was constructed. Visual references include historical narratives, children's books, medieval paintings, and everyday things found in the studio. In many, an abstract language or 'signature' (as related to the doctrine of signatures) was found over time through an intuited gestural conversation between two flowers.
Goldthread is the title of the exhibition held at JK Contemporary on Fogo Island in August 2022. It is named after a Fogo wildflower.
CELLAR DOOR - Site-specific project at the former Marconi Station, Fogo, collaboration with Kingman Brewster
2015 Paintings
2014 Paintings
2013 Paintings
images copyright of erin hunt