Life-Giver reflects my interest in the relationship between creator and creation, whether between mother and child, god and humanity, or artist and artwork.
I’m drawn to this dynamic because it feels fundamental to existence, yet can manifest in radically different ways depending on the role one occupies within it. It can feel intimate, alien, beautiful, burdensome, nurturing, or unknowable all at once.
The painting shows a dark mandorla shape feeding life into a pink and green fungal-like growth below. The stark black form contrasts with the bright pastel colors, giving it a more esoteric, distant presence, while the beam connecting the two acts as a kind of lifeline. I was interested in using opposing qualities – geometric and organic, dark and vibrant – alongside the unnatural lighting and ambiguous space to capture the strange but beautiful tension between creator and creation. Hidden within the beam are the words “I am” repeated in Morse code, pointing to questions of consciousness, identity, and what it means to bring a living entity into existence.