Today The Museum seeks to follow on from the excerpts from Philipa Perry’s article on transitional objects, which was posted a few blog posts back. In doing so I delve back to an article I wrote as a special feature for The Palette Pages entitled ‘Art As Healing?’ here http://www.thepalettepages.com/2014/05/04/art-healing-sonia-boue/
In it I explore my own background in art therapy and what compels me to work with my father’s plays in my work over on Barcelona in a Bag https://www.a-n.co.uk/blogs/barcelona-in-a-bag I suppose it has been only a question of time before The Museum blog and my personal artist blog should meet, if only for one post!
In my own practice I consider it vital to unpick the therapeutics of the work – it is after all autobiography of sorts and very much a ‘felt’ response to the material I encounter in my research. An understanding of the emotional entanglement with my subject allows for a distancing eye to come into play and I find there is no conflict in ‘working through’ my subject, and the visual output from the project. For me this is natural and harmonious but not always easy. We can’t control the material that may be encountered when using research into past lives, but also as war is my subject I am exposed to atrocity in many forms.
Thus an understanding of therapeutics, for me, is a tool of the object artist’s trade. I wonder how other’s see this?
