Seeds of Love: An Underground Network of Hope

In times when the world's chaos threatens to overwhelm us—when the news cycles spin with problems too vast to comprehend, when despair feels like the only rational response—I find myself returning to the earth beneath my feet.

This painting, Seeds of Love, emerged from that returning. From watching my silver birch trees root itself deeper each season. From understanding that what we see above ground—the graceful branches, the papery bark—is only half the story.

The Hidden World Beneath

Beneath the surface exists an entirely different world: a hidden network of roots and mycorrhizal threads, communicating, sharing resources, supporting one another in ways we're only beginning to understand. Scientists call it the "wood wide web." I call it nature's reminder that connection is survival.

The painting reveals this underground landscape through eco-printed birch leaves—their ghostly impressions transferred onto canvas through steam, carrying the memory of what nourished them: sunlight, rain, soil, time. Each botanical mark is a testament to life lived above ground, now feeding the network below.

The Witnessing Eyes

The eyes you see scattered throughout this underground landscape aren't watching in judgment—they're witnessing. Bearing testimony. Each one represents a seed of awareness, a point of consciousness connected to all the others through invisible threads.

These universal symbols emerged organically through the painting process—pupils that echo through Miró's dreams, Aboriginal songlines, and Sri Lankan mandalas. Ancient wisdom meeting botanical reality, reminding us that this understanding isn't new. Indigenous cultures and mystics have always known what modern science is rediscovering: we are not isolated. We are networked. Our roots entangle.

The Practice of Tending

What if the solution to our overwhelming world isn't to solve every problem at once, but to tend our own underground network?

Master chefs understand this instinctively. They don't try to master every cuisine simultaneously. They focus on the ingredients before them, treating each element with reverence, trusting that excellence in the particular creates something universally nourishing. Their discipline isn't about control—it's about attention.

My birch tree doesn't worry about every tree in every forest. It simply grows, drops its leaves to feed the soil, extends its roots to connect with its neighbours, and in doing so, participates in something larger than itself.

What Looks Disconnected Above Ground...

Seeds of Love is my meditation on this truth: that perhaps what looks like disconnected problems above ground are actually interconnected beneath the surface. That the eyes opening in the darkness aren't signs of surveillance or threat, but of awakening—each small consciousness finding others, forming networks of care and mutual support.

In chaos, we don't need to fix everything. We need to tend our patch, extend our roots, and trust the underground network.

The Invitation

Plant your seeds of love—whatever form they take. Attention. Kindness. Creative work. Honest conversation. Each act of care creates connections we cannot see but which sustain the whole system. Like my birch tree, we participate in forests we may never fully comprehend, but which depend on our willingness to root down and reach out.

This is what I see when I look at Seeds of Love: not a solution, but a practice. Not an answer, but an invitation to trust that beneath the surface chaos, connection is happening. Networks are forming. Eyes are opening.

We are not alone in the dark.

The Making of Seeds of Love

Seeds of Love began, as all my eco-print paintings do, with an act of collaboration between my hands and the dying bodies of plants. I gathered birch leaves from my weeping silver birch, pomogranate dropped on the ground at my neighbours nature strip, pittosporum leaves gathered after the hedges were trimmed, eucalyptus flowers that caught my ey on my walks in nature—is scattered across canvas that had been mordanted with soy milk.

Through three hours of steam printing, the leaves & blossoms released their essence, their final portraits permanently bonding with the canvas. What emerged was a network of botanical impressions, some bold, some barely visible, creating the texture of an underground world.

Then came days of embellishment with soft pastels—following the eyes as they revealed themselves across this hidden landscape, building the sense of interconnected consciousness, of witnessing, of seeds of awareness taking root in darkness.

The painting went through twice steaming & multiple iterations before finding its final form, each layer deepening the sense that something vital and alive exists beneath what we can see.

Materials: mixed media eco printing with birch on canvas.

Exhibition: Seeds of Love will be featured in my solo exhibition Return to Eden at Mystik River Gallery, Melbourne. Opening December 5th, 2025, running through February 8th, 2026.

RSVP to attend the opening here!

If you'd like to see Seeds of Love in person, visit Mystik River Gallery or contact me about preview appointments. This is a one-of-a-kind original work available for collection.

With gratitude for your presence in this creative network,

Dharshi