Awaken your connection to the natural world with ‘Spirit Animal’, by Andrea Hamilton

On a long journey home late at night, a white barn owl swoops through the headlights. As your eyes track its ghostly feathers, briefly illuminated in the darkness, your grip tightens the wheel. Your mind is tethered to this soaring bird, and feelings surge upwards, through you. The vision releases something forgotten and deeply familiar inside, something that connects you to another road, in another time. As the tears well, spill and fall, you are reminded of something your mother told you as a little girl, “owls bring us messages from beyond the veil”. Incomprehensible then, her words now appear with such clarity.

It is like waking up inside a dream, and instinctively you slow down, and pull over to absorb the moment fully. Suddenly, a car comes hurtling out of the darkness, but having altered your path, you fractionally avoid collision. How is it, you wonder, that this creature appeared at this moment? What does it mean, and why did you respond by changing your course when it appeared? Somehow it gives you great comfort, and you sense you are not alone. Perhaps, it is an omen, or maybe the owl is your spirit animal.

The first known paintings, found on the walls in the caves of Lascaux, are of animals. Whilst the artist and their intentions have long vanished, we understand the vital importance of their relationship, and the intensity of their connection to animals in a preindustrial world. In numerous indigenous cultures, we find the symbolic and totemic representation of ‘spirit animals’, illustrating a belief that objects, places and creatures all possess a distinct spiritual essence. A concept known as animism, describes our interdependence with creatures as not merely functional, but spiritually intertwined. Within the Choctaw tribe, birds are seen as ancestral guides, whilst the Sufi see our winged friends as protectors or companions that provide wisdom and support.

Today, with so much of the natural world and our access to it screened off, gated or vanishing under concrete, we rarely have contact with wild animals. And yet, we see them in our dreams. When we see them in works of art, like the running deer on the walls of caves, or the lone stage standing under a pale moon in Andrea Hamilton’s series we respond instinctively – we feel the tug of something ancient, un-nameable. In our modern era, we have relegated this connection to psychoanalysis. Jungian art theory interprets spirit animals as archetypes—universal symbols embedded in the collective unconscious. Spirit animals in art can be seen as manifestations of these archetypes, representing fundamental aspects of the human psyche such as the Shadow (hidden desires and instincts) or the Self (integration and wholeness). They are often seen as guides or messengers from the unconscious, offering insights into the individual’s inner life and emotional landscape.

Animals, especially when represented alone, key us into the artists personal identity, suggestive of life experiences, or perhaps symbolic of spiritual journeys and personal beliefs. In Andrea Hamilton’s series “spirit animal” we find a series of singular, haunting and mysteriously beautiful beings, each at the centre of its own universe. Each being is captured in the middle of the picture plane, emerging from the hazy, soft light. Of singular and primary importance, their appearance seems to also represent the moment in which everything else in the image coalesces. In ‘White Horse V (grazing by the river)’ the scene is complete at the point of vanishing. In this final hour, a grey horse, wild as the riverbank, dips his head to quench his thirst in the shallows. His buff mane is reflected in the wispy reeds; or perhaps it is the other way round – his pale coat has absorbed the landscape in tone and character. The horse holds the image together, because we know he will not remain, and it feels like a miracle that we have seen it at all.

In ‘Full Moon Stag’ An old stag steps out of the whiteness, directly beneath the pale orb of a wintering sun. His magnificent antlers reach up to the sky – as if to cradle the light that hangs low on the horizon – like a lantern. Ethereal but also ideally sighted in the landscape, there is a sense of the uncanny. We see a stag standing motionless, looking right through us; there is a slippage from the real to the surreal. One cannot know which came first, the landscape or the stag, the tone or the pelt, the waiting or the seeing. We are drawn into silence, and perhaps reminded of our own precious, fleeting encounters with wild animals.

For artists, animals often key into themes of personal identity, suggestive of their own life experiences, spiritual journeys, and personal beliefs. Within the context of Hamilton’s ongoing interest in the natural world, it is perhaps this series that gives us the greatest insight into the workings of her unconscious. She marries each being with her distinctive, desaturated colour palette, somehow recreating the wonder and magic of that precious encounter, and her love for documenting the nature in all its many colours. In ‘Half Light Heron’ we stand with her, looking out over the water, as the night vanishes into the rising mist. We sense the thrill of the moment when a heron alights at the end of the peer. It seems to land exactly at the epicentre of the scene, drawing everything else towards it, like the sun.

Whilst the concept of spirit animals in art can be linked to the interpretation of dreams and the exploration of the unconscious mind, a new field of ecocriticism examines the relationship between art, culture, and the environment. Spirit animals are considered as symbols of the interconnectedness of all living beings and the importance of respecting and preserving nature. This perspective often critiques modernity’s disconnection from the natural world and advocates for a more harmonious relationship between humans and nature. Within this field, there is a theory known as Eco-Spirituality, one that considers how how art featuring spirit animals can inspire a sense of eco-spirituality, encouraging viewers to reflect on their place within the broader ecosystem and fostering a deeper appreciation for the natural world. Hamilton’s ‘Spirit Animal’ sits elegantly within this framework, at once celebrating the fleeting nature of sighting a wild animal, and keying into our essential, spiritual, and deeply personal relationship to certain, special beings.

Nico Kos Earle
June, 2024