Listening to my subconscious

Giving myself time to breath in a quiet room. To digest the vast amounts of information I have absorbed and revelled in. Where is all this research taking me? How is it informing my practice and why?

The darkness I have delved into, of the birth of psychoanalysis, the experimental infringements on those in need of care. The allowance of fascination to inform a new wave of art. The troubled and frustrated minds of artists such as Schiele, I think needed this freedom of expression and avenue of release, just as I am looking for a way to release my frustration and trauma.

I feel comfortable that I understand this link and as to why I am so drawn towards these artists and period in time.

also my profound fascination in the de humanisation of the mentally ill and during Nazi rule, of the so called imperfections in children with health issues.

As I stop myself from diversifying, I also am confident to move forward in the exploration of my own troubled mind and feel it is important to openly address it, in an attempt to understand it.

As I expected, the draw to portraiture is great at the points of juncture in this journey’. It all feels too literal though, for what I need to externalise And I’m not getting anything from the process.

With the same memories running on loop through my thoughts, it became clear that ‘Little Boxes’ was not fully rendered and I needed to address it further.

In terms of my practice, the symbolic house had become smaller if there at all so where next?

It felt important to go back to the place of the intensely visible memory. Walking the path alone as an adult felt comforting and nostalgic. I took photos along the way and saw the blackberries in the hedgerow and damsons in the trees that I remembered so well.

I was walking over footsteps of the past, walking where I stood as a child and most importantly for me, walking where my mum once walked, four times a day, back and forth to school for years.

It all looked the same, some 35 years later and nobody who now lived there would know the importance of it for me and my mums memory, imprinted there. One day, when I too have gone, this imprint will be lost forever. How sad.

Although I didn’t know where it would lead me in my work, it felt so significant and made it real, not just hidden in my head.