Sanctuaries

1 : a holy or sacred place. 2 : a building or room for religious worship. 3 : a place that provides safety or protection a wildlife sanctuary. 4 : the protection from danger or a difficult situation that is provided by a safe place

Sanctuaries is an exploration into the human condition, a collection that has taken almost a decade to come to fruition. This happened quite by accident, starting innocently in 2011 when perusing the discount bins outside bookstores in London and Paris on a student budget during my maiden European adventure. 1€ secondhand books that I can’t read!  What a steal.  Les Merveilles de la vie caught my eye, and a peek inside revealed the gold mine of imagery. The idea popped into my head then: what if I cut all of these up?

Ten years later, with the stars finally aligned, a deep breath and a pair of scissors bore the series you see before you. The hodgepodge imagery is taken from pages of thrifted vintage children’s encyclopaedias, paired with snippets of my own paintings and scrap paper. Each artwork is meticulously, instinctively, and yet deliberately assembled. 

Here you will see some fantastical imagery, such as sledding down a double helix; a floral arrangement of wildlife, the mixing bowl beginnings of the universe, bambi eyes of lovers in Paris. I have created these spaces while in my personal sanctuary (my art studio with my dog!), imagining what physical manifestations of mindscape sanctuaries are like.

The Mixed Bag Blessing of the Tree of Knowledge 

I was drawn to the encyclopaedias on several levels. Firstly, the premise. I was humoured by the attempts to explain the complete history of man in under a hundred pages, through mostly imagery. Secondly, the target audience. Leafing through the pages of The Golden Book of Science for Boys and Girls conjured up images of curious and eager little faces, filled with astonishment and excitement. Adults lose this wide-eyed wonder to disillusionment, cataracts and well, experience. Which brings me to knowledge. Encyclopaedias embody and symbolise knowledge; they are attempts to understand the known world and all its inner workings, documented for posterity. We seek to understand, to be understood. These type of books are summations of all that man understands. 

And so it seems only appropriate to take apart all we know to know it better. To come to terms with mortality but also embrace that our very substance is the product of countless supernovas over billions of years. That we are made of dust, but cosmic dust. That we share this earth with royalty of other kingdoms, who will teach us their secrets if we bend the knee.

Knowledge is key to creating our personal sanctuaries: as we learn about the universe around us, our physical and mental beings, the core of what makes us tick — we get a little bit better at feeling comfortable in our own skins.