Cathectic Portraiture

Ancient and continuing tradition of the Cathectic people, where elaborate dermagardens are represented through intricate drawings. Due to the unwaveringly prolific practices of Cathectic portraitists, an immense number of Cathectic portraiture exists. Numerous catalogues attempt to document and classify these portraits by multiple criteria (i.e., color, automorph type, pattern, angle of sitter), but any comprehensive taxonomy is thwarted by the sheer variety and quantity of available portraits.

Some critics claim that Cathectic portraiture is a minor folk-art that has devolved into a numbingly repetitive form of kitsch, citing the repeating, limited, and ultimately mechanical conventions employed in their construction. Others see the practice as an enduring, thriving, and fascinating art-form whose practitioners produce infinitely novel permutations of beauty within the strictures of their chosen format. Regardless of how detractors or celebrants feel about Cathectic portraiture, the practice is clearly an essential part of any Cathectic’s ritual life.

While the variety of Cathectic portraiture is undeniable, most art historians agree that the form is a general fusion between botanical illustration and various portraiture traditions. While styles vary, Cathectic portraiture is rarely dedicated to offering a straight representational document of a particular dermagarden or its host. Instead, Cathetic portraitists revel in articulating and rearticulating the intricacies of the automorphs, their host, and the effects of the cultivated symbiosis. Many Cathectic portraits appear as dizzying patterns with little or no resemblance to the automorphs or person they purport to depict. This blurring of representation and abstraction is considered the ideal of the Cathectic dermagarden. Rather than providing clear diagrams to how one should begin to arrange a given dermagarden, Cathectic portraits seem to offer a more sublime guide for practitioners to meditate upon prior to undertaking the cultivation of automorphs onto a human host.

Rivaling the prevalence of Cathectic portraiture catalogues, a multitude of glossaries exist that attempt to name specific subjects and techniques used in the creation of the drawings. Most often rendered with traditional drawing media, some agreed-upon techniques include marrow marks and the inclusion of vines as host-plants and motifs. Cathectics do occasionally annotate and/or title their portraits, though these textual supplements often complicate rather than clarify. Though happy to share their creations, Cathectic portraitists never endeavor to explain their drawings in any way. This paradoxical combination of generosity and refutation has led to an enduring frustration and curiosity with Cathectic portraiture, not to mention the Cathectic religion as a whole.