Sentience

The Sentience series was inspired by observing the trees during a Vipassana meditation course. About half way through the 10 day, silent forest retreat, I found myself looking up at the giant blue gums. Their silent communication became quite palpable, as well as the sense of the very long time their conversations must take, days rather than hours, as their lives are much longer and slower than ours.

Breath through the trees was as my own breath passing through my lungs' tiny air-sacks. The weighty energy of dhamma drawing in and out of the earth of my consciousness, reflected on a massive scale between earth and space through the sentient trees.

There has been extensive research into the sentience in plant life, highlighted in books by Monica Gagliano, Suzanne Simard and Peter Wohlleben, which indicates that the conversations continue both through the air, via scents, and underground via the mycelium of fungi. Accordingly, on the unseen verso of this work I've painted the unperceived, underground portion of this conversation.