Transitions… as I move on into creating visual art that is my reponse to the restoring qualities of nature, I have been reflecting on why it has been nessesary to change direction…I feel like the change of direction in my art from social issues toward connecting with the healing and tranquil aspects of nature is an externalising of an inward need to travel from a place of anguish to a place of sanctuary and repleshishment/restoration. In affect my art within this project has become a mediating (a transposing) of my emotional life into the visual, a material expresson of an inward journey.
In phsychoanalysis there is the idea that people tend to veer away from that that causes them terror or anguish and I have unwittingly experienced a taste of that, I dwelt too long in the dark traumas of war and torture and have had to turn away, withdraw, and seek rest/ refuge. By pursuing an alternative subject matter and form of expression within my art my aim and intention is that this will lead toward a form of recovery. Through my own personal journey I hope to communicate how by reconnecting with nature visual art can be a vehical for healing.
In my dissertation I touched on Golub possibly experiencing trauma concerning his works of the Vietnam series and discussed Cathy Carthew’s views that ‘traumatic experiences cannot be assimilated at the time'(of trauma). It was also documented in Echoes of the Real, 2011, London: Reaktion Books,Ltd. by John Bird, which revealed Golub’s own anguish concerning his destroying of his own art works some time after the Vietnam Series.This possibly points to his own personal anguish concerning what his work portrayed and how it had effected him.
Whilst researching I also found in the book ,Fragile Identities, similar ideas concerning trauma in which Freud also suggests, traumatic experiences not being able to be assimilated as it occurs … but “as a belated address of truth.” In the same book, a qoute by William Kentridge,”We are made the beings we are by our histories personal and collective…yet also makers of our own history…we cannot construct our utopias to a plan outside history but equally we cannot fail to dream nor can we deny our capacity to act on our world. Thus we are forced into a choice – to change the world or leave it as it is – this after all defines us as humans.” (Tom Hickley,2007,William Kentridge-Fragile Identities, pp 85- 97. University of Brighton.) This is a challenging quote for me in that I have had to withdraw at this particular time from communicating current events on social aspects of life – by using art as a vehicle…yet like other artists one is finding ways forward to express and explore ones own personal journey, whilst remaining open to what is going on in the world, whether that is through ones own visual work, or in support of social issues as a human being through alternative means.
I also mentioned in my dissertation Susan Sontags quote,’let the atrocious images haunt us.’ in Regarding the Pain of Others, 2003, New York: Farrar,Strauss, and Giroux.
In retrospect, and now having experienced degrees of distress through my research, I have come to an understanding that it is nessesary to have balance in one’s convictions.
Through my work for the degree project I hope to gain a rebalance through focusing on aspects of nature, through art in order to find a place of healing, restoration, and sanctuary.
