18 July 2024

The Forest of the Unconscious

“A straight line is godless and immoral.”

Hundertwasser

The wild woman lives on the edge of the forest of the unconscious –

sealing it off from dark, evil doings and thoughts,

singing seductively.

“No one may enter unless they speak

in textures and colours, woven into

a lattice of the felt meaning of stories”.

But sometimes, when she shivers in the grip,

of her insignificance, she plays in

the majestic Silver Oak tree of her childhood.

She teases the three-fingered leaves of the poison ivy,

the beautiful villainess called Passion

to call upon the genius loci –

The unique intelligence of the spirit of all trees –

to share the swaying stories

of the irregular wildness of things green –

to explore that which grows beyond

Hundertwasser’s ‘immoral straight line’.

“White berries, green flowers

the wildling beyond hours

tumble and rumble in a cloud of breath”.

Nature paints the Earth in shades and tones of living colour, vibrating waves of sizzling greens playing with amber and burnt sienna, creating patterns like the undulating waves of the ocean rising and falling.

Her art is a cynical grimace, a neglected, unconscious background in a world of stereotypes and generalisations.