Totemic Heronlands Triptych Painting

Remembering the human psyche is an integral part of the greater psyche of nature has laid the ground in my painting for an exploration of origins and a connection to remnants of original aboriginal nature embedded in all our psychic foundations. I believe our original psyche operated with the inherent possession of an ecologically attuned sense of self in the world and that this remains latent in our psychological make-up. This ecological attunement of early peoples was absolutely necessary to live and prosper – it was a natural part of life. I am not suggesting that all early 'hunter-fisher- gatherer people' lived in complete harmony with nature or that they made the right ecological decisions about their environments all the time. Archaeological research indicates that hunter-fisher-gatherers have sometimes been associated with over-use of on their environs. What I am referring to is the faculty of early peoples to identify closely with nature as part of nature, to know their environments intimately and to identify closely with important species and elemental forces. This unity with nature engendered a deep respect - what we can call reverence. This unity and respect was a feature of and facilitated psychic attunement. This attunement was a strong mitigating factor in balancing their ecological impact on the environment, favouring the collective psyche over a split into the singular. In simple terms, early humans were not removed from animal and elemental nature the way we are today and their identification was profound. My painting has driven a connectedness and orientation that enables a very particular psychic attunement to nature providing me with a distinct ecological consciousness and purpose as a painter. Other beings in nature - trees, rivers, mountains, animals… like humans are, for me, both primal spirit and organic entity. They provide vital symbolic relationships and a landscape for the human mind that nurtures ecological attunement to nature. My psychic attunement to the essence of wild natural environment and our ancient ancestral human presence within it takes hold of my work and has a governing life of its own. This ‘taking hold’ is akin to 'an altered psychic state' allowing me to transmit primal elements of nature and deeper layers of historical presence of place without me being fully in control of the image making.