The structure of water

Water is a vital nutrient to life on earth: it’s our first building material, making up around 60 percent of the human body. It’s also often no less vital to the act of artistic creation, for example, we could think of the human body as analogous to a body of work, with water as the essential life-force.

It was Japanese water-scientist Dr Masaru Emoto who once said water is a “blueprint for our reality”, and made it his life’s work to prove that human consciousness can affect the molecular structure of water. He used a microscopic camera to photograph ice crystals made in glasses of water that he’d expose to different ‘energies’. Mysteriously, words like ‘I love you’ and ’thank you’ created intricately beautiful ice crystals, whereas words like ‘evil’ or ‘fool’ created vague, undone formations. With a less scientific, but no less insightful approach, we’ve thought about these experiments in relation to art and its ability to not only use water as material, but also investigate the meaning of water itself. As an elixir, as a mythological symbol, or as capturing movement and fragile emotional energy, our artists’ pieces show water as inextricable from the human condition.

See Angelika Biller’s investigations into opacity and voids through watercolour, reminiscent of both Rorschach ink blot tests and deep space wonders that continually challenge our consciousness. Or feel awe at Sarah Harvey’s surreal-yet-realist studies into light-play on water, using oil paint to masterfully evoke a pool of water, biblical in its proportions and significance. Elsewhere, Orla Kane’s intimate oil paintings depict the ethereality of water in pastels and dark blues reminiscent of Milton Avery’s abstract landscapes. 

All in all, these works think through the mystical properties of water with sensitivity and flare. So let your mind drift and flow… 

Artworks can be purchased with an interest free loan. Selected OwnArt at checkout.