The Plant Drummer’s Pattern

The Plant Drummer’s Pattern was included in the exhibition that accompanied the release of Christine Ödlund’s bookGrowing the Third Ear Under the Great Astral Mother Tree, at CFHILL Stockholm, in the spring of 2022. The elegantly designed, and richly illustrated book, containing essays by Louise Belfrage (BA in History of Religions, Stockholm University and editor of several volumes on artist Hilma af Klint), Ulrika Pilo (art critic and art historian) and Christopher Scheer (Associate Professor of Musicology at Utah State University, Utah, United States of America) gave an overview of Ödlund’s recent work, like, for example, The Plant Drummer’s Pattern. In conjunction with the exhibition/book release CFHILL wrote:

With an intense fascination for the vegetal world, Ödlund’s work aims to bridge the language barrier between plants and humans. Through her research, she has developed a profound appreciation of the vast intelligence of plants. She approaches this wondrous world of communication between living beings from inside as well as outside the field of science. In this series of works Ödlund moves into another realm where developing a Third Ear is possible – and becomes a listener, a hearer. The title of this book, Growing the Third Ear Under the Great Astral Mother Tree, refers to something that the artist has been occupied with for many years. Oscillating between music, metaphysics, art, science, and philosophy, Christine Ödlund has been searching for a method of tuning her mental setting away from the common idea of mind-body dualism, towards other ways of relating to the world and our being in the Universe; the high-voltage phenomenon of existence.

Works like The Plant Drummer’s Pattern departs from Ödlund’s allotment garden, in the north-east of Stockholm. More or less by coincidence, the standard-sized plot of land was transferred over to her, complete with pre-existing plants in 2019. Thus began a new chapter in her life —a new universe. With her attuned sensitivity and ability to perceive and intercept biological signals, Ödlund systematically got to know her plants. The allotment became a canvas, pigments already applied. A hyperrealism of sorts. The experience would prove to be of considerable importance for Ödlund, whose long-time interest in plant communication thus found further nourishment. Conversation partners such as John Cage (1912 – 1992, American composer, music theorist and leading figure of the post-war avant-garde. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music and electroacoustic music and one of the most influential composers of the 20th century), Agnes Arber (1879 – 1960, British plant morphologist anatomist, historian of botany and philosopher of biology), Henry Thoreau (1817 – 1862, American naturalist, essayist, poet, and philosopher. A leading transcendentalist he is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings) and Hildegard von Bingen (c. 1098 – 1179, ‘the Sibyl of the Rhine’, German Benedictine abbess, writer, composer, philosopher, mystic and visionary. Considered to be the founder of scientific natural history in Germany) also helped broaden the perspectives on cultivation, art, science, music, mythology and how we can coexist in an allotted space.

Ödlund’s allotment provided her with a variety of garden plants, some of which, with the help of Belgian pigment maker Ann-Sylvie Godot, where transformed and made into pigments used in the painted plant studies in the exhibition Systema Naturae (named after the title of Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus [1707 – 1778] major work from 1735) at CFHILL, Stockholm in 2020. Ödlund has continued to work with plant pigments (often in combination with oils and/or acrylics, pen and pencil) in several of her more important works on canvas like The Plant Drummer’s Pattern (2021, plant pigments, acrylics, pen and pencil on canvas, 195 x 250 cm), Träsket / The Swamp (2021, acrylics, plant pigment and oil on canvas, 204 x 345 cm) and Psychedelic Botanist II (Carl Linnaeus) (2023, oil, acrylics, plant pigments, pen and pencil on canvas, 237 x 163 cm), all in the collections of Firestorm Foundation.

Provenance

CFHILL, Stockholm, Growing the Third Ear Under the Great Astral Mother Tree, 2022.

Firestorm Foundation (acquired from the above).

Exhibitions

Lunds konsthall, Lund, Sweden, In the Pupil of the Panther, 11 September 2021 - 23 January 2022.

CFHILL, Stockholm, Growing the Third Ear Under the Great Astral Mother Tree, 2022.

Literature

(Eds.) Christine Ödlund & Louise Belfrage, Growing the Third Ear Under the Great Astral Mother Tree, 2022, no. 19, illustrated full spread in colour.

Copyright Firestorm Foundation