Art as Therapy

As a continuation of some of the ideas posted in my last blog post, I started to develop and work with the video footage I’d generated of me touching my own face and head in an investigative fashion. The original video was completely improvised and inspired by Gustave Courbet’s The Desperate Man, a self-portrait of the artist manically holding his own head. I wanted the video to convey this same sense of emotional turmoil; of Courbet’s own existential wonderings. I’m not sure if my own video does this; it feels a little muddled. I wonder whether it would be good to have some distance from the video, for now, and to be able to return to it with fresh eyes in the future. Perhaps it needs to be shelved for the time being. On the hand, I did it feel it might be useful to share what I’d done so far with the footage through this blog even though I’m not completely happy with it. It’s great to have this forum to speak confidently about things I’m doing or things that I’m interested in, but it’s also good to be able to voice doubts and uncertainties too. This particular work doesn’t fully resolved, although I’m glad I’ve wrestled with a bit so I can move on to something else now. I’d be keen to get other people’s views on the video, especially if you’ve read my previous post.