The Overview Effect is the effect of an overall view or survey effect. This concept was created by psychologist Frank White in 1987, who extensively described the phenomenon in his book “The Overview Effect – Space Exploration and Human Evolution.”
The Overview Effect is much more than a visual experience. It is a cognitive as well as emotional transformation, a sensation experienced by cosmonauts when looking at Earth from above. The view they describe is breathtaking, evoking feelings of awe, coherence, and perceiving oneself as a component of a greater whole. Astronauts claim they feel wonder and a profound connection with the planet and all humanity. Looking at Earth from above often makes people aware of their fragility. Frequently, a desire and willingness to protect the environment emerges. The Overview Effect changes the way of looking at Earth, which is often called the “blue marble.” This term fits remarkably well with the abstractions of Danuta Ney-Smolarska.
It seems that this is precisely how Danuta Ney-Smolarska looks at Earth in her works. Her paintings are organic abstractions that bring landscapes to mind. Particular landscapes, often resembling colorful satellite images of Earth. Blues and greens dominate them, like seas and oceans captured in views, snapshots from above. Pure, saturated, intense colors. These abstract representations constitute a very personal narrative about the author’s special relationship to planetary, natural, and ecological issues. We live in times of heightened interest in Earth’s condition. Topics of climate change and environmental pollution of land, water, and air are actively present in media, social media, but also in politics and daily life. Scientists are sounding the alarm about humanity’s excessive burden on the planet. Artists, particularly sensitive observers of current events, often become activists fighting in defense of nature. In the past, landscapes served to show beauty and harmony; today they often become carriers of dystopian visions of the future, predicting the possibility of ecological catastrophe.
Danuta Smolarska’s works are like plates used for recording and remembering. Like a microscopic image. However, viruses or molecules seen under an electron microscope seem to be like planets, celestial bodies suspended in the darkness of space. They look like visions of the universe from science fiction films. They are disturbing, ominous, alien. Meanwhile, Danuta’s abstractions are not like this. They are closer to a nostalgic vision of Earth as a garden, full of greenery and pure blue water. Only sometimes does a disturbing form creep in here like a thin stream, like lava from an unspecified volcano or perhaps a leak from a nearby factory.
“Humanity has conquered and domesticated nature, transformed the planet into a great garden, but it is a barbarians’ garden. It is difficult to distinguish what is natural from what belongs to culture, difficult to find the natural order of things. But perhaps such order is our invention? An expression of romantic impulse? Maybe we must first create an order that will fulfill our conception of nature?”
Julita Deluga
English 
Polish 