“Anima Animus” - the dance of our entwined personalities.
Jung’s concepts of "Anima Animus" are the hidden feminine within men and the hidden masculine within women. They exist in dynamic balance within the collective unconscious, a domain of universal experiences and archetypal knowledge we all share.
We have a dual-sided nature that presents itself as a whole.
From the beginning, I had wanted to create a couple in a dynamic gesture that symbolized their uniqueness as well as their interdependence. Since the two qualities combine to make a complete personality, it made sense to me that they be in motion. If there is anything typical about my approach, it is this: imagine a problem and then create its resolution.
The gesture is all about movement. Both figures are running, but looking in different directions — consistent with their disposition as masculine and feminine. They share momentum without sharing focus.
Construction presented a real problem. Each figure is supported by only one leg, which creates inherent instability — multiply that by two figures in dynamic motion and the engineering challenge becomes significant. I needed a third point of connection that would anchor and stabilize the whole without becoming visually clumsy. The solution was subtle: I connected their right wrists in a way that is barely apparent in the finished piece. It reads as part of the gesture rather than a structural necessity — which is exactly what it needed to be.
Materials follow my established process: a carved marble base, many feet of steel wire forming the armature — essentially a line drawing in space — with a paper and polymer skin finished in plaster and polymer texture, completed with acrylic paint. The surface is complex and tactile, consistent with the figures' psychological complexity.