Carol Sharp

Despite plants being the dominant species on the planet (99.5% of the total mass), and our total dependence on them for life, most humans have what has been coined 'plant blindness'. We see them as just a backdrop of green stuff and inanimate beings.

Over the last 25 years I have become deeply connected with the plant world; while influencing their lives for my own ends in my garden and my studio, I have been at the same time studying the extraordinary secret life of plants. I now practise Deep Ecology and give these wise beings agency, rather than seeing them as instruments for human needs.

This has influenced my approach to creating an image, I use different types of perception to not only see their form, but to understand the meaning of the form and to reveal what Goethe called their ‘gesture’, which means having a communion with them and a desire to feel their very life force.

As well as depicting plants in this intimate way in their natural environment, I also work in collage, using natural forms as metaphor to explore concepts and illustrate the patterns and connections between the cycles and processes in nature and our own, bringing scientific, philosophical and spiritual information together.

I'm particularly interested in connectivity. The material world is not a collection of separate objects, but is a network of relations between the various parts of a unified whole. Quantum physics tells us there is no objectivity and we are inextricably intertwined with everything that we experience.

As more evidence unfolds about plants ability to connect with each other and with the wider world, I question our relationship with plants and our perception of nature as a whole.