Estrangement: Challenging the Myth of Mankind’s Separation from Nature by Erik Hunter

The word human comes from humus — earth, soil, ground. Somewhere along the way, we forgot.

This series of paintings places human anatomy in direct conversation with the organic world — flesh becoming root, vein becoming vine, bone becoming husk — not as metaphor, but as reminder. These works do not argue that we are like nature. They argue that we never left it, and that the consequences of believing otherwise are all around us.

Each piece invites the viewer to sit with a discomfort that is, at its core, a recognition: that the boundaries we have drawn between ourselves and the living world are ones we invented, and ones we alone have the capacity — and perhaps the obligation — to dissolve.

Questions to consider while viewing:

Is there a point in our evolutionary history where we became something other than animals — or did we simply decide there was?

Does viewing nature as a resource to be managed reflect reality, or does it exist to quiet a conscience that already knows better?

If the health of our environment is declining under human stewardship, what does that suggest about the model of stewardship itself?