The Pollard Tree and Red Boots 2024 - After Rodin's Strident Man (circa 1900)

Dimensions: 225 X 108 X 72 cm.
Medium: Painted Wood.

This portal represents a cross section of a pollard tree with its core removed. This peculiar structure is attached to a disc-like base (no roots!) and, should anyone dare to step onto this precarious threshold, it will lurch violently, destabilizing things. On this threshold there is an alluring, but also accusing, pair of red boots!

When contemplating this portal one can become acutely aware of an all pervasive sense of absence: the loss of an essential vitality that acknowledges the sacredness of Creation. What mindset has brought about this peculiar aberration of the Tree of Life in our 21st century?

'After the idea of the Flood subsided, a hare halted in the clover and the trembling flower bells, and said its prayer to the rainbow through the spiders web.' from Les Illuminations by Arthur Rimbaud

In order to try and begin to answer the above question I have evoked Rodin’s ‘Striding Man’ (circa 1900) in my title but taken the liberty, in hindsight, to call it more aptly ‘Strident Man.’ I did this because Rodin’s ‘Striding Man’ (aesthetic considerations aside), seemed to me to epitomize how the masculine principle set off to ride rough-shod over nature in the 20th Century. This was rather dubiously achieved by the ensouling of the Second Industrial/Technological Revolution (late 19th century – early 20 century) with a strident masculinity that didn’t take into consideration the attributes of the feminine principle/psyche to bring a balance to essential progress.

How is one to engage with this portal and what will such an interaction bring about?