Abstract
For centuries, the concept of the sublime has been entrenched in White, Eurocentric, masculine metaphors, and frequently linked to man’s power in transcending and conquering immense or cataclysmic nature. Sensations of awe, terror, and transcendence in response to the vast power of the natural world, are common to all humanity. However, artistic responses to these sublime experiences have historically been limited to the heroic, and powerful dominance of “man-over-nature.” The Roar Within the Silence raises up alternative responses to the sublime, as seen by those whose views and experiences of the sublime have been traditionally discounted, ignored, and devalued by dominant forces in western society. It uses the term, “feminine sublime” as coined by feminist scholar Barbara Claire Freeman, to describe the sublime as experienced by “the other.” The abstract paintings in this thesis offer a different take on the dark, looming, limitless, seemingly unknowable, power of the universe. Rather than engendering the sensations of overcoming and conquering nature, these works speak of our inherent connections to the somewhat incomprehensible nature of the vast cosmos. The works consider relationships and connections in origins, whether in the unfathomable universe or the microscopic worlds of science. They speak to the power of the human mind and imagination to visualize concepts of geological time, limitless space, and the insignificance of our own lives, and yet to recognize that through the very atoms of our existence, we are part of nature, forever connected to it and to each other. This engenders a different type of awe and transcendent sense of the sublime.