To contact primordial forces means to accept and embrace the formless. In ancient Greek cosmology, existence arises from elemental forces that predate the gods themselves. What myth articulates as primordial, the psyche embodies as instinct. Primordial memory—an instinct residing in the body and mythic imagination—is an ancient psychic knowing of the soul. It is into this instinctual nature that we are born and from which, in our essence, we are derived.¹

 

To create from this instinct is to remember oneself through the body. Primordial takes shape as arrangements that give form to immediacy, suspended between painting and sculpture, resisting the fixed demands of either.

 

Iron oxide, a pigment derived directly from the earth, stains the fabric shades of pink—at once corporeal and emotional. Layered alongside synthetic inks and dyes, this work positions geological time beside manufactured color, while the introduction of black evokes the pre-formal dark from which color emerges. The fabric is creased and folded, with pigment settling into the folds to preserve the memory of each movement. The work becomes a record of change, its initial gestures transposed into the fabric’s hang and drape.

 

This body of work approaches primordial as a condition of becoming—a state in which form remains unsettled, responsive, and alive. Gravity and air function as active materials, inscribing direction and shaping composition by natural law. The work emerges through a continual negotiation between control and surrender. Each arrangement is contingent—draping has no fixed form, and yet form continually emerges.

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-Rebecca Poarch