Ania Spyra's “Energia” Series

Each of the images in the series  Energia  began with a skeleton printed with a linocut and its ghosts, later animated with vibrant wavy cut-outs of watercolor, mono-printed, mulberry and found paper. Each linocut was an airy warp on which I wove – at times intertwined – the textured paper. Intended to express the energy that moves and pulsates within everything, the images illustrate the vibrant fires that constitute life. I began with the green fire, but always envisioned a series, a dance, re-performing the same oval form in another color to see how each color organically suggests a different element: earth or plant life, water or air, and fire itself. The Polish title emphasizes the deep Proto-Indo-European root (* werg - “to do”) shared by the word for what moves, what is active, alive, marking energy one of the first words. The same root gives the multivalent English “work” the sense of a life’s meaning, as in Aristotelian  ergon .