ELEMENTal reality

Just been watching the 2011 documentary Consumed and was very taken by these words spoken by Alastair McIntosh:

I think we become dissociated from the wild when we discard our relationship with hands-on experience of elemental reality – of fire, air, earth and water. Everything gets served up to us on a plate because we’ve got a highly mechanised, computerised, globalised supply system in which we have lost touch with where things have come from in the natural, living world. And as a result of that losing touch, we’re no longer able to care so much, because we just don’t feel it in the same way.  (30:06–50)

Printmaking is certainly a way of getting our hands dirty and engage in elemental reality – especially when we use natural inks made from local materials. We are probably very used to offering these elemental experiences to our children, but when do we make time for this ourselves?