Medieval Plankton and the Four Humors

Medieval Plankton and the Four Humors

Thanks to the Oxford Gallery of Rochester NY for inspiring this image.  Each year the gallery director, James Hall, comes up with a challenge for the gallery artists.  This year he challenged us to work with the theme of the Four Humors.

Because the idea of the Four Humors stems from early medicine, I turned to a Medieval Hebrew Manuscript as a source of inspiration, mixing the motifs of the era with my own captures of plankton. Of particular interest was the way in the plankton became to take on the character of the medieval decorative faces - the same lifelike haunting spirituality of the Middle Ages.

Bible by JOSHUA BAR ABRAHAM IBN GAON, Spain, 1310
Calendar of festivals  Bibliothèque Nationale ms Hebr. 21 Folio 4v