In what soil do the roots of the tree of philosophy have their hold? Out of what ground do the roots—and through them the whole tree—receive their nourishing juices and strength? What element, concealed in the ground, enters and lives in the roots that support and nourish the tree?
-Martin Heidegger
Central to this current body of work is a question of ‘grounding’. In these paintings, figures are digging, excavating, surveying, planting, uprooting, burying; their efforts are simultaneously focused toward and dependent upon the ground on which they stand. Yet, within this situation there emerges a conflict, a tension between the represented figures and the soil with which they interact. In each case, a ground is certainly present, yet its spatial location and its relationship to the figures, is in question. Where we would expect to see a represented ground plane, instead we see the physical ‘ground’ of the painting itself (the surface/color that the painting is built on). The represented figures thus appear somewhat incongruous with this surface: the very thing upon which their efforts—and their very existence as representations—are dependent is inaccessible to their investigations. The ground is too literal, too physical to be entirely absorbed into the representational space, and this renders it an odd sort of transcendence: the representation cannot access that on which it is built, that which it covers and obscures.
In much contemporary thought it is considered that we are ultimately unable to account for the ‘ground’ on which we build meanings. The argument goes that our representations of the world—whether in language, image, or thought—cannot contain or justify the basis of representation itself. How can the ground of language be expressed through language; how can the source of thinking be thought; how can reason justify itself without already assuming the validity of reason? It seems that there is no way to articulate absolute foundations, because we are already making numerous assumptions anytime we think or speak about such foundations. For many people, this circular pattern implies a sense of groundlessness, a sense that the cosmos is ultimately arbitrary and that meaning is inevitably a ‘free play’ of our own construction.
This series of paintings, however, moves in a different direction. Despite the circularity of human language and meaning—which should be expected of finite, fallible beings—we find that our engagement with the world works remarkably well. The ‘ground’ beneath us—inaccessible as it may or may not seem—is extremely fertile, producing a world that is dense with life, growth, and meaning. It seems that underneath the human mind and human language is an unknowable, unspeakable—perhaps even unmanageable—ground that supports and gives life to meaning. Perhaps this is our most fearfully sacred space, and it is to this space that these paintings are addressed.
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