Image: Heart of Family by Jorandi Kisiku Joseph Randolph Bowers

A work of immense warmth and spiritual depth, 'Heart of Family' centers on the sacred hearth fire within a wigwam. The deep, sacred colours evoke the ancient and enduring spirit of family, kinship, community, and loving kindness.

Collection: Legacy Collection
Medium: Acrylic on Canvas
Size: 45 × 60 × 1.5 cm (17.7 × 23.6 × 0.6 in)
Year: 2021
Provenance: Includes a complimentary copy of a publication detailing the work's exhibition history.

Story & Narrative Significance

The Wigwam is the home of the people, the place of the hearth and of comfort, safety, and survival. It is the origin of all stories. At its centre burns the Sacred Fire, which represents the prayers of the Elders and the truth that all are connected. This shamanic work of art is a participation in this dance of creation, drawing spiritual energy into tangible shapes, colours, and movement. The painting is a profound reminder of the primeval power of home and the narrative of heart and soul that begins there. It is a significant piece for a collector who values art that is deeply connected to cultural heritage and the sacred nature of family.

Available Here.

Deep Human Connections

For an art or music collector these bonds that we form around art production and sharing are a form of sacred contract that is built on a foundation of humanity, vulnerability and a growing sense of assurance and trust. The collector or art lover feels assured the artist or musician has reached a level of performance in their craft that this warrants enduring loyalty and support.

This affirmation of the artist and their work in question is no small offering and in many cultures is called a form of devotion and affection. In the west, we say investment and acquisition, LOL, at least when getting transactional. When not so blunt and bottom line westerners might say instead, the artist is admired and respected.

Seth Goden, a western business and marketing guru, suggests that when an artist achieves this level of admiration they produce something remarkable. That is, worth mentioning and making remarks about. We got a feel for this today when a Facebook compatriot posted one of our paintings, the Bishop’s Rose, to their timeline and later they wanted to add the link to the painting’s webpage to share its story.

Remarkable Art

This kind of organic reach is building a community of art appreciation - and it is not so much about the monetary value or even about the aesthetic value of the work. It is rather about the human and felt story being shared. And when the backstory also gets a mention this deepens the discussion.

We now feel and know profoundly that an artist embeds their story, their joy, and their grief into the canvas. A painting is an offering. It is, as I shared, an “externalisation of something inward that speaks back a story of our own becoming.”

A collector, in turn, responds to that call. To acquire a work of art is to accept that offering, to say “I see the story you are telling, and it resonates with my own.”

But we feel that art appreciation transcends ownership of an image on canvas - especially now in our tech era and with AI looming. To gaze upon an image on our phone is to hold a piece of art in the mind and heart, even to touch the soul.

New Fidelity in Art Participation

This new modality in art and culture is a new and reformed experience of sacred and ancient Custodianship. If you get your head around this notion, you are opening up to a secret that no one is talking about right now. Everyone is focused on the risks and downsides of technology revolution.

But as we look deeper, we see that our era is redefining the very nature of art acquisition and ownership. Digital forms of art in both reproduction and in original digital creations are reframing the essence of sharing art - rather than in one piece personally owned the reframe expands toward shared moments and continuity in cultural sharing of parts and fractions of an artwork - and across vast distances.

Digital Art Participation

A person in Australia can hold a share of a real physical painting hanging at a gallery in France. Their investment can attract personal value, cultural meaning, as well as percentage increases or decreases in share value.

Likewise, an artwork grafted into an NFT (Non-Fungible Token) is said to be an art asset and compelling for several reasons. The digital form imprints a permanent, enduring and incorruptible nature to the work or its representation. The latter quality of the digital form raises questions for the asset class definitions - as real assets are physical objects that endure but are also subject to aging and entropy.

One might suggest the digital systems and their evolution also comprise forms of entropy, which as a perspective borne out through experience of generational changes in technology may hold merit over time. a physical painting. and even this new form of participation and cultural exchange is being rewritten by blockchain code and made possible in ways that support real artists in real time. Artists can have built into NFT code a royalty kick back when their works are resold in future - ensuring support of artists in ways never possible in the past.

However you slice the pie, art appreciation is both participation and potentially about some level of ownership - or at best what we prefer to call Custodianship. This latter concept arises from Indigenous wisdom and like most ancient cultural teachings, the vision is more holistic and less transactional.