Emily Pothast
We Are You When You Are Dead
Collage and coloured pencil on paper, 2008
16-1/2 x 6 inches
Here’s a lovely and enigmatically titled work by Emily Pothast that has more than a hint of the alchemical, and for me also a strong sense of Gestalt.
Note the association with the tree of life of classical alchemy – this work having the same number of eyes as the tree of life has heads (one for each of the chakras). The image below is the alchemical androgyne, from the Rosarium Philosophorum of 1550.
The tree of eyes (“I”s?) grows from a noumenal field, one that is structured just the way things are, in accordance with the Flower of Life design, a so-called “seed image” for many ancient sacred geometries.
In this work, the ground is an energised seed for the outpouring of the tree, as the many I’s of the self outpour from the noumenal.
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Wow! Thank you so much for the deeply insightful post. The image is, of course, entirely alchemical, down to the color scheme, (although some of those decisions were made unconsciously…)
The title refers to a medieval folk tale I once came across in a book of manuscript illuminations. Three knights are riding horses through a forest when they come across three skeletons riding identical horses, to whom they inquire, “Who are you?”
“We are you when you are dead.”
So on one level it refers to an encounter with one’s own multidimensionality; of simultaneous being and nonbeing. On a more literal level, the title is a nod to the “death-and-resurrection” motif so common in human mythologies, emerging from the (often distressing) experience of being both self-conscious and moribund. The members of the plant and fungal kingdoms represented by this eye-tree and the ground it’s growing out of derive nutrients from our dead bodies, taking us through the “other,” silent half of our own life cycle.
Again, thanks for finding me. I’m very excited to read your blog (and posting something about it on mine!)