ARTIST STATEMENT — EXISTENTIA: In nomine Matris.
In Existentia, I hope to introduce to the viewer, especially within the combined imagery, a world rich and
full of spiritual potential.
Utilizing the earthbound, still, objective qualities of documentation, and combining that approach with the
digital technique of overlapping imagery, it is my aim to represent, in visual terms, a unifying
force which nourishes and sustains a relationship between “the others”, where only complements, not
opposites, exist.
By presenting a symbolic and literal merge (using the method of overlapping imagery), I offer the
challenge of reflecting and engaging the hidden mysteries between the worlds, beneath the Earth, and
behind the scenes. It is my hope that upon viewing Existentia, one can be teleported into a different part
of the life/death cycle and start to engage the idea presenting a wholeness of spirituality less as a
linear trajectory towards inevitable decline, and more as two forces that overlap, producing a third force:
Life or the Holy Spirit. And in doing so, this introduces the concept that Life has no opposite, and if opposites
do exist, at least in interpretation, it is birth that is death's opposite, not Life.
The merging of photographs also acts as an introduction to subjectivity (a departure from the single
images’ objectivity)—opening the images to a subjective viewing space, leaving form and ideas open to
interpretation by the viewer. Solid objects lose form, as consciousness recedes into the subconscious.
Within the single images, one might see objects, a graveyard, bones...watching, peering, protecting.
Perhaps these objects are represented as unassigned altars, presented in a mundane, earthbound,
biological, material world; a place where death is equal to stillness, and there is little room for subjectivity;
a place where viewing is likely trapped in the day-to-day “life-or-death” cycle—where life is safe and death
is sad, where death is final and birth is celebrated.
In this work, I hope to help facilitate the transition from the “rational” frontal lobe, into the riches of the hind
brain, where primordial knowledge of a larger truth resides, and often drives conscious behaviours. In
doing so, I hope to reveal a third force: the force that nourishes and sustains both light and dark, birth and
death—a force that holds space for and supports life and death as complementary forces—like the red
and blue electrical cords, running through many of the photos—providing a meeting ground for movement,
between and through.
Using the above listed techniques, it is my hope that Existentia offers an alternative choice in perspective:
not the choice to see death as a sad, limiting, event, buried in decay—both physical and emotional, but
instead as relief, transformational, a gateway, and even exaltating. And perhaps, mental and physical
spaces, though presented to and interpreted by some as junk and mess, provide a fertile ground, rich with
spirituality—much like the natural world grows nourishment from manure.
Within the confines of my creative work, my objective is to merge the duality, experienced by the
conscious mind of humankind, into one internal space, thereby assuaging fears—caused by perceived
separation—and fostering new feelings of connectivity: no divide.
In the creation of my art, I am interested in examining how seemingly unrelated forces, deemed in
opposition, are actually mutually supportive, at a fundamental level. Existentia is a good example of this,
by seeking to integrate the sphere of the biological and earth-bound, with the spaces of the etheric,
transcendental, and miraculous.