Prologue. How It All Began

Human Garden began as the story of three paintings. I conceived them as a complete artistic statement about the human being — their origins, relationships, and individual presence.

But as I worked, these three paintings became the starting point for a much broader exploration. The questions that emerged gradually moved beyond the original concept, giving rise to new images, artistic directions, and forms.

This is how my first artistic world, Human Garden, began to take shape.

But why did this world emerge in precisely this way? Why did Naive Symbolism become its language, Emotional Cartography its method, and the tulip its central character?

The answer begins long before the first three paintings.

More than twenty years of working in graphic and brand design shaped my attention to the visual sign — its ability to convey meaning through stylised form, colour, composition, and visual identity. At the same time, I was fascinated by the study of symbols found in folk crafts, ancient cultures, and the art of different peoples: from Ukrainian pysanky and Trypillian ceramics to the ornaments and archetypal images of Celtic, Sumerian, and Mayan cultures, as well as those of African peoples.

Naive art held a special place in these explorations — its freedom from the literal depiction of reality, its rejection of traditional perspective, and its ability to speak about complex things in a simple, direct language.

These early explorations, experiments, and works are brought together in Before the Worlds.

Gradually, I brought naive art and symbolism together in my artistic language — Naive Symbolism, where stylised forms, clear outlines, flat colour, and archetypal symbols become carriers of multiple layers of meaning.

But I was interested not only in individual symbols. I increasingly thought about the invisible connections between human feelings, memories, events, and relationships. Could they be represented as a map? Could we give form to what we experience but cannot see?

This is how my method, Emotional Cartography, began to take shape — translating emotional and psychological experience into a system of symbolic images and visual interconnections.

At the heart of my method of Emotional Cartography lies research, from which an artistic world gradually emerges. I begin with observation, studying natural forms, psychology, cultural images, and symbols. Then I search for their internal connections, experiment with stylisation, develop my own visual language, and build a system in which each image finds its place.

This process exists not only in finished works, but also in drawings, sketches, symbolic studies, and compositional decisions. An artistic world can therefore acquire its structure long before all its parts appear on canvas, in ceramics, sculpture, or a book.

For me, creating an artwork is not the beginning of research, but one of the ways of making it visible.

And when I turned to the subject of the human being, I needed an image capable of telling the story of human becoming.

Why the tulip?

Its life begins with a bulb hidden beneath the ground. Roots develop from it, followed by leaves and a stem, and only later does a bud appear. In this gradual development of form, I saw a metaphor for human life: roots — origin and heredity; growth — the accumulation of experience and growing up; and the bud — the formation of individuality and a mature personality.

Thus, the tulip became a metaphor for the human being, and the garden became a space where human stories, relationships, and states meet.

Three paintings formed the foundation of Human Garden: Memory Garden (Family), Shared Bloom (Friendship), and Inner Garden (Presence).

The Beginning — Three Paintings

Each of the three paintings revealed a separate dimension of human existence. Together, they were intended to form a complete artistic statement.

How can we show what connects us to the past?

In Memory Garden (Family), the family becomes a vertical line of time — from ancestors through the present to future generations. White silhouettes of ancestral souls appear in the background. Bulbs and roots symbolise origins, while the buds repeat the features of parents and children: the resemblance between mother and daughter, father and son. Not only physical resemblance, but also similarities in character, habits, preferences, and patterns of behaviour. In this way, the past continues to live in new generations.

And what connects people who do not belong to the same family?

In Shared Bloom (Friendship), relationships develop horizontally. Here, three flowers are united not by kinship, but by shared interests, tastes, needs, and emotional closeness. That is why they have no bulbs or roots. The symbols in their buds resemble musical notes — the resonance of the strings of the soul, through which people find one another.

And finally, who are we ourselves among all these connections?

In Inner Garden (Presence), a centre appears — a person in the present, embodied in a large, fully formed bud. Behind it, the silhouettes of childhood and youth emerge in fine black outlines. Everything we have lived through remains behind us, but does not disappear: experience becomes part of who we are today.

Thus, the three paintings formed a kind of cross of human existence: the vertical line of inheritance, the horizontal line of relationships, and the centre of individual presence.

I thought the story was complete. But the more deeply I looked into these images, the more questions arose. How is memory transmitted? What makes up individuality? How does a person live through their experiences, make decisions, and change under the influence of feelings and relationships? What happens to them in moments of choice, loss, growth, and transformation? And what remains of the paths in life they never took?

Gradually, I realised: the three paintings were not the conclusion, but the foundation. Core Paintings became the basis from which, like from a bulb, new artistic directions began to grow.

Human Garden was only beginning to bloom.

Beyond the Three Paintings

The questions that emerged from the first three paintings gradually shaped the further development of Human Garden. Each new direction became an attempt to explore an aspect of human existence that the original triptych had only suggested.

First, I wanted to trace the journey of life itself. This is how Extension Paintings emerged — reflections on birth, growing up, care, memory, the transmission of experience, and transition. On how we gradually become ourselves, and how the invisible presence of other people participates in this becoming.

Then, as though holding a magnifying glass, I moved closer to the tulip itself. What lies hidden within its leaves, bud, and roots? This is how Structure Paintings were born. In the leaves, I began to explore the traces of lived experience; in the bud, the internal processes of personality formation; and in the roots, origins, inheritance, and the invisible mechanisms of transmission. Each part of the plant became a separate map of what usually remains hidden from view.

But a human being is not only their life story and inner structure. They are also the states through which they pass. In Archetype Paintings, I turned to recurring archetypal states: becoming, inner tension, fragmentation, renewal, and liberation. I was interested not in individual characters, but in how our inner states change and what forces accompany these transformations.

And how many different versions of ourselves exist simultaneously?

This question led me to Reflection Paintings. In Reflection I — Multiplicity Within, I explore the many feelings and states that coexist within a single personality. In Reflection II — Modes of Relation, I examine how a person interacts with the world, opens up to it, protects themselves, trusts, or withdraws. And Reflection III — The Unlived Garden is devoted to what might have happened but never did: postponed decisions, unrealised possibilities, and unlived versions of one’s own life.

Gradually, Human Garden became increasingly complex. And I noticed that the same symbols returned in different works, changing their positions, connecting with one another, and acquiring new meanings.

Does this world have a language of its own?

To explore this, I identified twelve recurring symbols, dividing them into primary and derived forms. This gave rise to 12 Inner Symbols and the concept of Atlas of Inner Symbols — an art book revealing the meanings, interconnections, and psychological functions of these forms.

But if the atlas explains what a symbol means, how can we understand what it does?

This question led me to Grammar of Symbols. Here, meaning emerges not only from the form itself, but also from its position, repetition, scale, and relationships with other elements. The same symbol can connect, divide, organise, or transform the surrounding space.

Gradually, what emerged was not simply a collection of images, but an entire visual system. I decided to preserve the process of its creation in Cartography of Becoming — a research moodboard made from real materials and artefacts accompanying the development of Human Garden. Tulip bulbs and their cross-sections, petals, plant fragments, sketches, studies in stylisation, colour palettes, clay samples, tools, symbols, and drawings for future sculptures — all become part of the material history of this artistic world.

But must an artistic world remain confined to the flat surface of a canvas?

I began searching for new materials and ways for it to exist. In sculpture, symbolic tulips become three-dimensional embodiments of Jungian archetypes — identity, shadow, duality, and transformation. In ceramics, the language of the garden takes on a tangible form: vessels, fragments, and structures made of clay preserve traces of accumulation, opening, change, and time.

Other ideas also emerged: an illustrated children’s book helping readers recognise and express feelings through symbolic images of tulips, and an art postcard, where seven different flowers remind us of the different states within ourselves and the need to care for each of them.

But one more question remained.

What if the viewer could not only see Human Garden, but enter it?

This is how the idea of spatial installations was born — a world through which one can walk, in which one can pause, encounter symbols, and meet one’s own experiences.

Imagine a large tulip whose bud you can look inside. There is a mirror within it. And instead of the expected image, a person sees themselves.

At that moment, the story of the garden becomes their own story. Among the symbolic flowers, they may recognise their memories, relationships, feelings, and stages of becoming.

And then Human Garden becomes not simply a world I have created, but a space in which everyone may discover something of their own.

Epilogue. Beyond the Garden

Human Garden became my first artistic world. It began with three paintings and gradually developed into an entire system of images, symbols, and artistic forms, united by an exploration of the human being — memory, feelings, relationships, and continuous becoming.

But for me, Human Garden is not the conclusion of this exploration. It is its first territory.

I am interested not only in the human being, but also in the world of which we are a part. Nature, space, time, memory, invisible structures, and the connections between phenomena — all exist in constant interaction.

And the further I go into these explorations, the more clearly I understand that an artistic world is limited neither to a single subject nor to a single scale.

Sometimes, to see the connections, we need to step back and take in the whole. Sometimes, we need to move so close that we discover a complex world within what once seemed to be only a small part of another.

Other artistic worlds lie ahead of me. Each will have its own subject of exploration, its own images, and symbolic structures. But all will be connected by a shared artistic language, my original method of Emotional Cartography, and a way of seeing the world through relationships, memory, nature, and human experience.

The focus will change. The scale will change. But at the centre of my attention will remain what connects, shapes, and transforms everything that exists.

For every world is part of another. And every new perspective reveals connections we had not noticed before.

With reflections,
Tania Bond