This week when I did a Google search for image elements I wanted to use for a new painting I also searched for pictures of embryos and the growth in the womb. And then I came across all kinds of pictures of inner organs and the like.
Though these weren’t new for me at all, I suddenly became very vividly conscious how under the surface of our skin there is a totally different world than what we normally have in our awareness: When I meet other people I don’t see them in terms of muscles, heart, lungs, intestines and the like. I perceive a personality and, if clear enough, the soul working through the body. I see a being expressing through the body. We speak, exchange, express love, sympathy or any other emotions. We communicate, build up concepts, and live in the worlds of our family, profession or society. And some millimetres below our skin there is this world of pulsating organs, like another planet. A wonder how we blank out these dimension and live in our own worlds, created by our perception. Of course it is illusionary and transient, but that is the dimension where we are mostly living in. And in the underground there are forces and laws at work which shape our destinies…
A picture I selected for the painting was a drawing of the Scottish anatomist William Hunter (1718–1783) for the embryo in the uterus. I transformed it into blue and integrated it into the picture I did for Cancer. The embryo is head downwards, like our normal perception. Even if we are living with our heads up, we are mostly oriented “downwards” to matter. Let’s turn around and look upwards. It is just a little change in perspective.
William Hunter, drawing of an embryo, from Wikimedia
