Watery Brood: Artist Statement

Watery Brood presents surreal aquatic creatures that personify psychological traits and instincts.

Personality trait psychology is the inspiration for Watery Brood. 50 years of empirical research and factor analysis have given us the “Big 5” personality traits (See “Personality” by Daniel Nettle, 2007). Traits are not discreet types but rather suggest a continuum of the amount of a trait that a person typically expresses. The 5 traits all correlate to specific brain activity. The Big 5 traits are Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism (which spells OCEAN).

Watery Brood is a visual response to these concerns. Personification is an attempt to get at what a trait feels like. The metaphor of ocean (as adaptive unconscious) and surreal creatures is an entertaining vehicle. Some of the paintings are portraits while others attempt to show the interaction of the traits or their conditional variability.

The white abstract shapes in Watery Brood serve as a kind of visual backbone of the composition, an extension of the border and wall that further subdivides the image. The white also suggests an absence that is also a presence. Much of human nature, our ancestral genetic endowment, remains unknown. There are some aspects of human nature that can never be objectified into falsifiable empirical fact. Still, we are on the verge of really knowing a great deal about what makes us tick. Evolutionary psychology, behavioral genetics, primate research, brain imagining...are all in their infancy and this knowledge base is expanding exponentially. The role of art is to take stock of where we are at this exciting and disorienting time and to dialogue about what it feels like to be the first people to live with and integrate these truths.