Photo by Alexander Berg

Several principles permeate how I think and make my work. I view it as a marriage of art theory, esoteric philosophy, energy healing bodywork and sound to create situations for heightened awareness to arise within human relationships and to regenerate our bodies.

My study of Buddhism and the influence of meditation on the body and mind combined with my practice of Jin Shin Jyutsu, an energy healing art using pulse analysis where the fingertips identify energy patterns pulsating throughout the body. My fascination with listening to the pulses of the body led me to study hand drumming (Cuban percussion) and ceremonial sacred rhythms (Candomble). Other influences include the thinking of Joseph Beuys and his ideas of mystically charged materials; Sympathetic Vibration theory by John Keely; the healing diagrams of the Swiss healer and artist, Emma Kunz; the minimalist grid paintings of Agnes Martin, to name a few.

I employ abstraction as a means of exploring what I call Tuning Compositional Strategies. My project, "Tuning Scores for the Nervous System" is a visual investigation of the body’s rhythms and patterns, generating collaboration with musicians and their interpretations of the scores. Information carried in the spine creates neural structures where thoughts, attitudes and actions are generated. I'm interested in what that information looks like as it moves in thought patterns and rhythms throughout the body and the interaction with the agency of vital materiality, primarily copper, for its conductive and therapeutic qualities. The nature of substance combined with intention, links copper's physical material properties to the spiritual.

It is through our subjective interaction and interconnectedness that meaning is felt and constructed. I depend on the viewer to bring generative content to my work. I create context for that to happen, a visual physio-philosophy for holistic body/mind perception. I believe the interaction with art does not depend solely on the observation of the object but the physical sensation to be fully realized in the body while viewing the object. In the words of political theorist, Jane Bennett, "to promote more attentive encounters between people-materialities and thing-materialities.". 

Kathleen Anderson 2020