The term "plant blindness" refers to the tendency of people living in modern environments to not see or notice plants. Pushed to the boundaries of perception they become mere decoration.

This detachment has historic roots.

I think the persecutions of women as "witches"  beginning in 15th century Europe had an impact on the general attitude towards what has been demarcated as "nature" vs. human spheres. While many of the victims may not have engaged in any type of herbalism related to witchcraft, the knowledge about plants - once preserved by midwives and oral traditions became an interest of patriarchal science. The concept of  the Scala Naturae, the "great chain of being", cemented plants in the hierarchy of importance and worth in the second last place after minerals.

Yet in folk tales plants or plant-like beings retained a sense of agency or personhood for a while. For example as "Moosweiblein", forest spirits in legends from Thuringia, Upper Franconia, Saxonia, along the river Saale, and in other places. Written down in the 19th century one has to assume that until then such stories were relatively commonplace in the collective memory.

With the development of consumerist capitalist societies plants became a supposedly sustainable resource in an unsustainable system.

In recent years long established notions have been contested by scientists like Monica Gagliano, whose experiments sparked a debate about plant subjectivity, sentience and ethical standing.

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 I think it is possible and necessary to unlearn "plant blindness", to arrive at a more complete perception of the world in which our human lives depend entirely on those lives which seem so unreconcilably different.   

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Besides this theoretical part of this project I got more interested in my immediate surroundings.

I wanted to know who is holding the house in a leafy embrace. A nuisance to some who prefer a "cleaner" garden, a small strip of overgrown back yard provided home to a variety of plant species, birds, lizards and insects. 

One plant, a climbing knotweed started to overgrow my window with a net like structure of branches, eventually making their way inside through a broken shutter. I could not unsee plants anymore. 

The backyard is a liminal space of urbanity, the backsides of two houses and a fence wall enveloped in wild vines and ivy. A bush of summer lilac in the corner hosting a buzzing monthlong feast of nectars hidden in small conically arranged flowers . 

I got fascinated with those four beings - lilac, vine, ivy and knotweed who were transforming and creating the small space. I began to watch their flowering and fruiting through the seasons, observe their ways of growing and climbing along blank walls, the details of their anchoring roots. 

​​During renovations the plants in some areas of the backyard were cut - the lilac sown down, the vine and ivy cut from the wall, leaving behind hairy knotted roots inseparably grown into the stone. 

No doubt those renovations were necessary yet I could not help but feel sad about the disruption of the space which held a value to me that others did not see. 

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Within a couple months I became witness to the resilience of most plants I thought to be dead. In the same year the lilac tree was cut down to a stump new sprouts started shooting up growing flowers again.

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I had collected parts of the cut roots, branches and leaves, with the intention to give those overlooked plants space on a canvas, neither as a background to the human stage or as a scientific object, but as a subject growing out of the two dimensionality of the painting..

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With this project I want to re-member plants as alive beings, inspired by myth and science equally. 

I've started the first canvas with the working title "Efeu träumt" (ivy dreams), combining oil painting with a collage of plant parts encased in epoxy resin.

The images below show details.