Life Force
Across cultures and centuries, the idea of life force has offered a way to speak about the unseen energy that animates all living things. Known variously as prāṇa in Indian philosophy, qi in Chinese tradition, mauri in Māori, rūḥ in Islam, and pneuma in early Christian thought, it has been described as breath, spirit, or current – something not confined to the body, but flowing through nature, matter, and consciousness alike.
Whether viewed as divine spark or dynamic field, life force unites the visible and invisible, the personal and the universal. It is both what gives form and what moves through it — the deep pulse of what we see of the world.
For John, sculpting is a way of entering into relationship with that pulse. He works with roots from fallen pohutukawa trees — iconic to New Zealand’s coasts, they grow in dramatic defiance of gravity and exposure. To ground, roots force around and through rocks – in a seeming harsh struggle for survival – but whose contortions, when you see them free and clear, actually manifest in effortless grace.
In the studio, John doesn’t seek to impose ideas or correct these forms, but to listen to them – to respond to the gestures the roots already carry, to the life force still present. Sculpting becomes a form of attunement – removing noise – to uncover what is present but not yet fully seen. Accessing aliveness.
When a sculpture carries life force well, it creates a subtle but powerful exchange: a sense of connection, expansion, and presence in the one who encounters it. A sense of at-one-ness: form and flow as one, simplicity and inner calm, not-separate.
