There tangible process of creating traditional art has a magic to it. When I spend hours pouring energy into a physical painting, working in exchange between the artwork as it is and the piece I’m trying to create, I always find there is a presence to an original that makes it feel spirited in some way. It still feels special every time.
In recent years, in the face of more and more of our lives being pushed towards the abstract digital space and further into alienation from one another and ourselves, I think people are hungry for the tangible. For things created by human hands with human intentions, building real meaning that informs their lives in real ways.
I grew up with a love of nature and a disenchantment with the human world in the shape that I understood it to be at the time, which led me to becoming an avid lover of fantasy artwork and novels. It was my escape to worlds where nature was ever-present, and centered characters who found within themselves the best parts of the human spirit, which they used to create real change and put their world onto a path of connection and harmony.
It seemed to me that such triumphs over darkness were only possible in those fantasy worlds, but never in our own. The increasing anguish I felt at impending climate change and most people’s complete lack of engagement with it led me to pursue an understanding of why our modern world is the way that it is, and how we could change it.
Placing this pursuit at the center of my life has transformed the rest of my life around it. I came to understand more deeply that there is no such thing as a division between “humanity” and “nature”, and that our disconnect from being in reciprocity with the land and one another is at the center of enormous harm to both human and other-than-human life. The systems of colonialism, imperialism and capitalism which broke open and maintain this division are an outgrowth of historical forces, and are not somehow a “natural” feature of our human nature. On the contrary, a tremendous amount of energy and effort is constantly being spent to keep the capitalist system going in spite of how inefficient and egregious it is.
here’s a link
