the whole grows from the part

the whole grows from the part
Watercolour on paper
31cm x 41cm
2023
Seth Deacon

From the Foreign bodies series:

This is a series that contemplates the potential of the parts of our souls/selves we sacrifice for expediency.

Where do these pieces of self/soul go? If theres a truth to the idea that we lose a little more of our selves each time we betray our sense of what's right, or what is meaningful to us, when we become numb to atrocities as well as the smaller  shrinking we do as we chip away at ourselves to better fit the expectations of others. 

Do they take new forms? Dream their own dreams? Do they drift off, become what we never could? Would they transcend our clumsy limitations, create strange new utopias? Or would they like every other revolution repeat our mistakes, dream of wondrous new ways of being only to become stuck in the usual quagmires of control and fear. Start making statues to their past struggles, their emancipatory journey, mistaking calcification for purity?

It is a series of branching possibilities and questions. A method of reflecting on our losses, and trying to imagine what real hope might look like.