Minds and Souls

My focus is disrupting Western culture’s unquestioning beliefs in human exceptionalism and the ideology that humans are the designated masters over nature. Indigenous and other cultures, based on centuries of experience and observation, offer a different view, wherein nature (animals, plants, rocks, etc.) are, in essence, persons that have consciousness and are contributing, active agents in an entangled world of other sentient beings. Women have too often also been objectified and used by patriarchal cultures as being “less than” – relegated to nature rather than contributing to culture. This painting portrays species that may protect us and uses shading to illuminate objects and their entanglements, while throwing shade on an increasingly problematic belief in human exceptionalism that has wrought havoc on both women and the Earth itself.