I have taken inspiration for this artwork from one such fringe theory, that of Terrence Mackenna’s postulation on the role of psychotropic plants in the expansion of human consciousness and the dawn of aesthetic experiences.

Terence Mackenna was an American Author and philosopher, as well as a self taught mathematician and ethno-botanist.

According to him the accidental or deliberate inclusion of plant sourced psychedelics in the diet of early humans stimulated novel patterns of cognition, encouraging metaphor, abstraction, and vocal experimentation. This, he claimed, seeded the development of language and symbolic communication.

These altered states of consciousness opened humans to visionary experiences and archetypal imagery that inspired the invention of art, poetry, and myth, giving rise to the aesthetic and religious dimension in human cultural experience.

I have condensed these ideas into a composition featuring a fruit motif that takes on the role of an Alchemist’s alembic used for distillation. The painting is subtitled 'Distillation of Sentience' referencing the arrival of artificial intelligence and synthetic consciousness. This main motif is presented as though submerged in a chaotic surface made up of cartographic elements, terrain map lines, dripping computer code graffiti, and biomorphic shapes giving the impression of an abstract conceptual diagram with an embedded narrative.