Creatures Big and Small - 'After all we are just primal beings.'

April 30, 2025

Creatures Big and Small - 'After all we are just primal beings.'

'My wings feel clipped,

yet i soar in ambition;

a lifelong goal met while laying in bed'

Creatures Big and Small

Creatures Big and Small was created during a time of play within my life, i felt as though I was experiencing life again and found joy in the little things but more lessons were to be learnt within my process of drawing.

I was really happy with how my art practise was forming and this collection was a play of the practise itself, how much I could do within a drawing; a fun little test. I was able to add such detail within my works with this new practise; a new muscle was forming.

Keeping within the themes of seeing how nature relays back to us our nervous systems, I focused on animals and thought about their nervous systems and inbuilt patterns.

‘Jellyroom’ within this collection symbolises all of this animal- nervous system- nature all in one. A hybrid jellyfish with a leafy nervous system and a fungi body; a reflection of our own humanness within a simplistic lense.

'We are after all just creatures'

I was just amazed looking at animals and how they adapt and move within their environments, this would eventually lead on to me viewing people doing things and finding such joy, awe and delight. The sting of envy will be a topic within sudden disability as a separate post.

When a Kangaroo is in go it will hop as if it’s gliding making it look effortless. Big leaps and bounds as if the terrain is easy and soft like clouds. They then dig holes in the dirt to rest and nap on hot sunny days.

The Octopus doesn't live for long yet residing within them, ancestral knowledge seems to make them move and adapt to the environment of the harsh ocean, an in-built system filled with wisdom. Stuffing themselves inside little crevices to hide or tricking prey they somehow get just get it.

The Queen Ants role is to breed, to churn out as many ants to help the colony grow before her time is up. Hidden away and protected, she is beneath the surface surrounded by safety. Her colony keeps her safe and does the entire grunt work, in a harmonious union.

The rat who instinctually knows how to forage around quietly and quickly to acquire morsels of food and quickly scurry back.

Animals adapt to their environments, grow bigger legs, become smaller and move in massive groups. We as humans i feel do not adapt to a certain degree anymore, our societies and systems are a reflection of this. There is a disconnect towards other humans due to religious beliefs, bias, belief systems and perceptions. We aren't around big communities we are all separated by the individual houses we reside in. It would be far easier to witness Ants doing a task in a smooth and organised fashion, humans would be so much harder to wrangle in and work together. It would take practise to get a good result within humans vs. Ants that would just instinctually do it.

I believe we also aren't living how we should be due to how society is. The artificial lighting, poor quality air, an onslaught of information at our fingertips and within grocery stores; looking for tea bags and there is Fifty different flavours and brands, this constant barrage on our nervous systems isn't good. That constant over stimulation within our daily lives that we may even be unaware of. The state of our current world is also a reflection as to why we aren't living as we should, the rat race scurrying around for money trying to survive, our nervous systems are paying the price.

Go to the zoo and look at an animal in their enclosure, depressed moving slowly, bored, walking around in circles or nudging a ball around; how are we any different within our society? We've put ourselves in our own cages.

Animals in the wild like us have this instinctual flight and fight response, they are under real threats at any given moment and they have adapted to these threats; but they recover better than humans do. And that's most definitely because of our minds, we can perceive the smallest thing as a threat we have this primitive nature still inbuilt from us having to run from tigers. But we don't have any use for this mechanism any more besides learning to not run out on the road, don't touch hot things, or that person gives me a gut feeling. We need a healthy amount of anxiety, it teaches us danger, cause and effect and consequences.

Instead of accepting this part of human nature within us we ruminate and see things as the enemy, a neighbour that cut down a tree can cause news headlines, wars are started from this perceived threat of another country, a wrong order causes a screaming match, our outside reality is shaped off of experience, memory and belief systems, and people have forgotten how to be self-aware.

A big issue for myself living with FND and Dysautonomia it almost feels as though my own body is now the threat, the enemy. The lack of self-control over symptoms and the unpredictable nature of them, it soon feels like i am in an internal warzone; I am both the Kangaroo and the Hunter. It’s hard to reign in my mind and tell myself I'm OK my body is a safe space when it really doesn't feel that way at times. I believe is due to past traumas, the imprinted memories of abuse and trauma within my nervous system come out when I have really aggressive symptoms and episodes, it feels like a blow every time and I have to be careful and reframe it as much as I can.

How am I any different from a dog that was neglected and abused? Timid and quiet, head hung low, shaking and shivering when humans are around, they know from their experiences that humans are a danger, I have just internalised like the dog. A dog in the wild while vicious isn’t exposed to the dark side of human behaviour.

This collection was a beautiful time of play, but it was also a study of animal behaviours, primal instincts, learnt behaviours, perceptions, reflections of nervous systems and human behaviours. And more importantly how my own life experiences have shaped my nervous system and my shaped my behavioural patterns, perceptions and beliefs.

'How I wish to be

a Kangaroo sitting near a tree'