PSYCHOSCAPES: Archetypes from Nature

Reptile Mother: Ecola State Park
CC Jean Stimmell: 9/11/13

In my last blog, I attempted to show how art images can originate as archetypes from our collective unconscious by contrasting Rodin’s sculpture, The Thinker, with an amazing 3000 year-old piece of indigenous art. (I’m aware that the ancient indigenous piece was undoubtedly created not for ephemeral arts sake but as part of an overarching spiritual quest).

These two sculptures are examples of archetypal images welling up from our collective unconscious – our common pool of our history from the dawn of human time across all races and cultures. But our collective consciousness – at yet a deeper and more fundamental level – is molded by our primal relationship with the natural forms of Mother Nature that surround us.

I will attempt to illustrate this principal by comparing and contrasting photographs I took at the Northwestern Native American art exhibit at the Portland Art Museum with photographs I took in the Sitka Spruce rain forest at Ecola State Park in Oregon today.