SILVIA KARAMFILOVA

“ROOTS” is part of a cycle of paintings named “Words” to which I return to from time to time.

It fits organically into the overall theme of the exhibition as it tells the story of our beginning, the place where we were born and from which we started our development. It is also a figurative place which represents the concept of “anchoring” which grounds us and keeps us stable and centered no matter what we decide to do with our lives and where they take us. If the previous two paintings call for us to turn our gazes towards the outside world of the unknown, this one incites us to think about what it is that we consider as our roots. We know quite well, that no venturing into the unknown can take place without a stable notion of the place we started from and the awareness of who we are.

The roots of the Tree of Life lie deep and spread into the earth’s soil which is our eternal home, our anchoring point. Its branches reach high into the sky and soak in the nurturance of the sunrays allowing us to grow, develop, blossom, burn, wither and ultimately rebirth with the coming of spring. Trees have provided us with shelter, protection, sustenance, resource of medications, fire, energy, weaponry, tool building and construction materials. Trees can withstand the toughest of storms which is why plenty has been written about their strength and endurance.

According to Manuel Lima in his “The Book of Trees. Visualizing Branches of Knowledge”, “trees also provide us with an important metaphor for creating knowledge classification systems. Throughout human history, the tree structure has been used to explain almost every facet of life. It pragmatically expresses the materialization of multiplicity (represented by the succession of boughs, branches, twigs and leaves) out of unity (its central foundational trunk, which is in turn connected to a common root, source, or origin).”

In my painting, the city nestled at the bottom of the tree (the roots and the trunk) represents the unity which gives rise to the multiplicity of stories (the branches with their leaves) which each one of us carries throughout life from birth. These stories branch out, interconnect, clash, overshadow each other or stimulate each other to grow. Some of them never close the cycle by never returning back to the starting point. In all cases, however, there are grains of that unity that live on and define our character.