Title: “Panspermia”
Artist: Cherie Roe Dirksen
Size: 800mm x 800mm x 44mm
Medium: Acrylic and Mixed Media on Boxed Canvas
‘Panspermia’ is made up of two Greek words — ‘pan’ (meaning ‘all’) and ‘spermia’ (meaning ‘seed’).
Panspermia is a hypothesis that suggests that life exists throughout the universe and can be distributed via comets, meteorites, asteroids, etc. It is a theory that even Stephen Hawking subscribed to in a presentation about space in 2009, and a concept that the late archaeologist, Zecharia Sitchin, wrote about in his Earth Chronicles (where he documented his findings about extraterrestrial intervention here on Earth whilst translating the Sumerian tablets).
When I began work on this painting I had absolutely no preconceived idea of what it was I was going to paint. I started out trying a new marbling technique I’d seen on a YouTube video that I thought looked pretty cool. When I’d finished doing this effect on the canvas I began to see ‘things’ in there.
My job then was to extract and give shape and form to what I was seeing. Some things were recognizable and quite common (for instance, the lions face, fish, eyes, a yummy looking chocolate rabbit) but then other interesting forms started to emerge that I couldn’t explain.
The work I did in the top left hand corner came right at the end. As I stepped back from the picture, I got the feeling that this piece was trying to transcend the space/time realm. Then I got the idea to insert the clockwork/gears/mechanisms as if they were falling apart or unraveling as the artwork takes you into the ‘timeless’ realm or what I refer to as the ‘Void of All Possibility’ (as Indian spiritual author, Deepak Chopra, has touched on in his body of works).
The origins of life are strong in the subject matter and one can pick out vague assimilations of sperm, male and female genitalia as well as eggs or ovum. In this quantum soup, you get the feeling that all ideas are stewing — like the potential of a fertile womb.
I love the philosophical works of author and scientist, Gregg Braden, who touches on the Divine Matrix (matrix meaning ‘womb’ in Latin) in his books as being the field of energy that underlies all physical existence. Some of these ideas that are stewing in the painting may come to physical fruition and some may not. Maybe some are the things that nightmares are made of and others are possibility of life that will be seeded elsewhere — in realms beyond our dimension or solar system.
The spirals in my art are always symbolic of the energy that surrounds and permeates our very existence (spirals, patterns and the use of gold and metallic colours are what draws me to the work of Klimt; Van Gogh and his pure energy in motion brush strokes has also added to my fascination with spirals and energy in art). In the top left hand corner, I see glowing, spirit-like beings escaping time and melding back in to the void.
I used bits of mirror in the artwork to entice the viewer to see the piece as a reflection of their own, potentially fragmented soul — what do your eyes see?
In all, I like to express this piece as something that will tell a different story to every individual observer. Hopefully, it will be something that — when revisited — will keep on giving new insights and multi-faceted information.
Let me know what you think of the painting — what thoughts, emotions, feeling does it evoke?
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Cherie Roe Dirksen 