When we focus our awareness on our senses, we instantly connect back to the present moment. This practice reflects how powerful our bodies are in shaping our perceptions and day-to-day experiences of the world around us. Our senses define our depth of connection to our environments and the art of presence: they are active tethers to reality and cognitive well-being, enhancing how we resonate with life. In particular, our ability to smell is often the most undervalued sense, yet it is a direct neural pathway to the brain’s memory and emotion centres. In the womb, the sense of smell is the first to develop, and is fully functional before birth - an evolutionary nod to the importance of our intricate...
This society echoes the impacts of a system that is built upon wanting more, at the detriment of Earth and our values of quality. Oftentimes this false desire for excess confuses what truly matters and reflects the symptoms of capitalism. During the festive season, we can often observe exorbitance in our world’s patterns of consumerism - it feels like a lack of mindfulness for the purpose and quality of products and engagements. As with most things, however, there is a way forward that redefines what it means to be a consumer: there is a noticeable shift in the collective towards conscious consumerism, not just during the festive season but year-round. Conscious consumerism can be seen as a value and a...
Nicolene Burger is a multimedia artist playing in the fields of painting, installations and performance art, though her relationship with practices of creative expression extends into the way she navigates life itself. Art for Nicolene is a form of embodiment: “art is the medium through which I delve into myself, get to know deeper parts of myself, and the way I study life and how my brain works.” Nicolene’s first time connecting with oil-paint was in University studying Fine Arts. Discovering the flow state of this medium was like finding her ‘mother tongue’. Her teacher at the time encouraged her to intentionally seek discomfort in her work, going beyond the comfort zone and into experimental styles. She started painting with...
"What's the difference between your perfume oils and 'spray' perfumes? What defines a cologne? What should I choose?" Very frequently asked questions, explored and answered.
Alouette Ferreira is a South African oil painter exploring themes of connection, yearning and perception. Her style is soulful and smooth, capturing the essence and ‘the emotional resonance of a subject or object’ through her paintings, rather than a hyper-realistic interpretation of them. Deeply moved by the feeling of longing, Alouette relates to and draws inspiration from a Portuguese word - Saudade - which refers to “a melancholic longing or yearning for something that does not and probably cannot exist, something other than the present”. She is passionate about how the medium of painting can capture the intangible and the invisible - what exists beneath the surface of what words can do justice. “I am defined by a desire to explore...
