Art Practice
We are defined by our likes and dislikes as much as we are by our convictions, if not more so. Our politics and religious beliefs mark us as members of clubs of the like-minded, whereas our tastes — idiosyncratic, intuitive, capricious, are often more revealing about who we really are. — Edward Gorey
Rebecca Purcell’s artistic practice merges multiple aesthetic interests and creative exploration with theories on the nature of consciousness. Through in-depth investigations into the objects and images we are drawn to and collect, Purcell re-contextualizes our relationship with material culture. She asks us to dig deeper, past our simple attraction to aesthetics and their associated memories and conventional meanings, and into the psyche as an imaginal space of personal potential and creative growth.
Our experience of nuance, polarity, and resonating energy is a core learning tool of Purcell’s practice. Actively engaged in reinterpreting the role of aesthetics and personal preference as a source for reaching hidden recesses of creativity, she has created both temporary and permanent artworks, often talismanic pieces related to ritual. With recurring themes of symbology and coding, she suggests the interstitial realm of creativity is alive and available at the unseen and unconsidered periphery of our attention. Tethering the mythic and the ordinary, Purcell’s work hints at secret languages existing below the surface.
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After years of idiosyncratic and autodidactic research, Purcell has translated her explorations into a set of 9 cards called the Organon 9 Worlds Deck. Each illustrated card illuminates an esoteric domain filled with a rich language of aesthetics and symbolic meaning related to an individual’s creative process.
You can purchase card decks below.
3. Familiarity-cyclical phase. Focus on initial inspiration. The resourcefulness of working with the land and one’s hands. The cycles of life and orderly measured occupation within an insular environment.
5. Domestic-bonding phase. Focus on flights of imagination. Getting in contact with the uninhibited subconscious mind of childhood. Open-minded and eager to connect and learn. The shining qualities of fastidiousness and idiosyncratic techniques for organizing.
9. Inventive-entrepreneurial phase. Focus on adventure and budding curiosity. The desire to strike out on a new journey toward a desired goal or intention. Working with constructing, building — the optimism of a 'brave new world.’
11. Radical-mark-making phase. Focus on generating energy. Associated with shadow aspects and the desire to impress — either in accordance with or in contrast to one’s environment. Connoisseurship, classic organizational systems, dialectical thinking, disruption, dissection, and analysis.
8. Theatrical-extremes phase. Focus on performance. Hybrids, polarity, and duality. The outer edges of creativity expressed theatrically in an outrageous, brash, glittering way or through otherworldly austerity. Pushing boundaries in search of new avenues of embodiment.
13. Emotional intel-sensual phase. Focus on full-spectrum experience. Passion, gathering sensory information, and developing emotional intelligence. Sensual and enveloping. Self-absorption entangled with the capacity to give and connect.
7. Quest-champion phase. Focus on the search for meaning. Things formerly held to be real are seen to be illusions, prompting a period of wandering — physically, mentally, emotionally — looking for the key to unlock the truth/authentic self. At times it is a kind of endless journey with an answer seen in every new perception.
2. Clearing-stillness phase. Focus on retreat and emptiness. Letting go of the past/present/future. Going to the bottom of the well to experience the absence of form and content. Letting go of judgment to connect to the aware self. Uncovering the inherent polarity in all — the marriage of dark and light — and the reality of seamlessness.
12. Purpose-world making phase. Focus on calling. Looking from a higher perspective, seeing life, and all lives, as significant and meaningful. Shifting life experience into positive action, personal world making and making a difference in the world at large. Embracing complexity, embracing the power to transcend and incorporate.