Christine Weir
Three years ago I came across a book that made a profound impact on how I view pretty much everything — James Gleick's Chaos: Making a New Science. One specific takeaway was that I began to look at how chaos, fractals, fluid dynamics and other phenomena can be applied in a practical way to understand our personal experiences. At the same time, while finding the challenges of middle age to be ever greater, I noticed how many people around me were also struggling. These events inspired a shift in my work, allowing me to move from chronicling how we use and manipulate our planet, to focusing on the interpretation of internal landscapes.
Using Google Earth for inspiration, I look for specific features in the landscape that convey a feeling or emotion. In this case, waterways. Like our minds, waterways ebb and flow, change course, flood, and are influenced by their environments. Flowing water can be like thoughts and actions that are deeply ingrained patterns, or newly created pathways. The old way is still there, under the surface, a permanent record of the time that has passed.
We each have subjective interpretations to the world around us and the worlds within us. Color, pain, emotion, we only really know our own experiences, which are called Qualia. My drawings from the last several years explore this idea.
For more information about Christine Weir, please visit her website.