Life on Venus II | The Human, Live Auction

 My current body of work is driven by curiosity about the interspecies relationship between the plant and the human,  thinking it through with painting as a tool.  Staging these encounters with the plants in the form of tea sessions and painting these lived experiences afterwards helps to slow down this thinking, paying the undivided attention to what I deem important. It’s all about how different smells and tastes hit you, savouring the emotional flavour of the experience.  Every sip of tea, every brushstroke becomes a point of meditation on this interdependent relationship and the way the plants make you feel.

I have a biographic reason to pursue the subject of plants, as if fulfilling this genetic matrilineal program: my mother studied botany at the university and went to be a forester, while her grandmother was the wise woman of the village, dispensing herbal remedies and incantations. This personal history gives me an angle into how one gains meaning and nourishment through their relationship with others with the environment.