Artist Statement
We, the collective human species are no doubt a visual species. Our language (at least in our western idioms) always seem to have a desperate need to communicate in visual terms. Phrases, when someone is understood, are often visual metaphors. “ I see what you mean.” “ They spoke clearly; or: She painted a picture of the subject.” Early human emergence has lately become a fascination of mine. Where did art come from?, Where did we learn to communicate? One such theory that strives to answer these and many other questions are the Stoned Ape Theory. The theory that as we were herding our cattle through the High Paleolithic Saharan Grasslands we, the human species discovered and ingested psychedelics plants changing us from being an advanced animal to thinking caring, dreaming being. Through this series, I intend to create four pieces on wood panel (sized 16” x 16”) The panels themselves will be decked in gold leaf, echoing both the Christian iconography of the ancient Byzantine empire as well as playing off the work of Marcel Duchamp and his seminal work “Fountain”. Within the gold leaf frame, the work will attempt to contain what I coin as “ psychoactive chaos” it will merge botanical illustrations with an abstraction of colour, geometric forms and primitive rendering of the human figure to create windows for the viewer to get lost in.