A caped drifter, rendered like an icon, sitting cross-legged in front of a hexagonal cityscape overlaid on bright stripes.

Detail from Collapsing Towers, D.W. '22

Hylozoic Fossils

Imaginations of the Primordial Earth

I was layering photos of dry twigs and herbs, boosting their contours to find new shapes. All of a sudden I had this fossil imprint of flying fishes in front of me, right out of an archaic world full of protozoan forms. This was the direction of the series Hylozoic Fossils¹.

I have created modern cave paintings with the gravity of old master etchings² and the glistening coloration of an industrial oil spill.

I want to evoke an eschatological³ scenario: A panoply of life forms at the dawn or apex of civilization coalescing into something else. This captures the challenges of a modern multicultural and multispecies community.

It is telling that this symbolism emerges out of the seeming chaos of undergrowth that you can find anywhere on earth.

A porous stone surface dabbed in blotches of neon and covered in deep black scratches recalling cave paintings of fishes.

Photographic Composite | D.W. '22

Flying Fishes

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A rough and broken concrete surface covered explosively in neon spray paint and black scratches evocative of ferns.

Photographic Composite | D.W. '22

Broken Glass

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A billowing cloud arrangement in red and yellow chalks, covered in black tumultuous crosshatching converging on the center.

Photographic Composite | D.W. '22

Collapsing Towers

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Spectral blue dabbed with blood-red blossoms and covered in fine radiating black lines recalling floral ink drawings.

Photographic Composite | D.W. '22

The Garden

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Footnotes

1↑ Compare hylozoikon, an ancient greek concept involving an animated, primordial substance. Also compare Aristotles hylemorphism, roughly speaking the duality between form and the principle animating it. These concepts have a lasting influence on my aesthetics.
2↑ I specifically recommend etchings after Peter Paul Rubens.
3↑ Greek eschaton, the end of times. I use the term without religious connotations and without implying a catastrophe, merely to give the sense of important changes.