Shame
The trees -particularly Ash and holly – look like up-turned people with their legs in the air. There are bottoms and groins, on one I draw a pair of pants with a piece of found chalk (it washes off). Everybody’s bottom is on show.
Everybody’s head is in the ground.
This idea resonates.
I’ve been walking to avoid people, to avoid being seen and heard, and in this space have felt safe.
I’ve avoid the centre-piece of Kingley Vale to follow the animal paths and remain hidden.
I’ve been working intuitively and the idea of shame resonates.
Shame is something that one has done to oneself.
Guilt is something that one has done to another.
Drawing and creative practice has given voice to difficult emotions.
During my first solo show I felt had opened myself up to public gaze in a way I hadn’t anticipated, that I had revealed too much. That work had been powerful and dealt with issues of abuse in relationships.
http://tiffanyrobinson.co.uk/?attachment_id=56
Coincidentally the work was called ‘in fear of judgement’.
I consider how I am going to work with the theme in a meaningful way that is safe (similar to working in the forest in a way that doesn’t damage the forest or myself).
We’ve had 50mph winds for two days, the trees are shaking down to their trunks, the audio recordings have this background noise that sometimes wipes my voice out.
I walk towards the grove but before I get there I find about fifty wild pink orchids with brown marks on their shiny green leaves. Last year I met a young woman who threw a bunch of picked orchids, a big bunching handful, to the ground when she saw me, hoping I hadn’t seen her drop the evidence of her crime. I challenged her and remember the shame in her voice as she tried at first to deny it, then said she didn’t know that it was illegal.
I think about the voice I’d given to the trees, about how it had been a projection. The drawings aren’t right either, they’ve become too much of a depiction and less about the essence of the experience. Think about ways to abstract this, and about ‘shame’. How would shame feel like in the body? It would be mercurial, hot, heavy – it gains in weight not size, it’s a knot in a drawn line.
I audio-record through the forest voicing ideas about shame, and of a shameful experience. I walk to the siren ash.
Shame only exists if there is judgement.
Judgement of self before judgement of others
I question what judgement I’ve passed on myself with regard to the experience and how to represent that.
