crafty days at home

hardly there at all and yet so much pain

I can say with honesty I really like these 2 images

Trying to stick to the line

All day long I have been drawing and replaying images in my mind from placement; stills, short and not so short video clips, diary entries... over and over again like I am tracking over my memory trying to check I haven't missed anything. It's exhausting and I just want to turn off. Maybe I am just understanding it all or making it seem more real. Or maybe it's so real I have to break it down into manageable inserts that I can look at one by one. Such intense imagery and feelings.

someBODY
anyBODY

what is it to be embodied?

I make images which relate to the female body. I am interested in exploring how the body physically contains what is inside (emotions, experiences and memories) and how at times this can seem beyond the capacity of the body which can start to feel like it is melting, disappearing or even disintegrating. What has been so carefully held on the inside starts oozing, seeping and leaking out. I am interested in inside and outside, public and private and how memory is so integral to our sense of self. What is seen on the outside and how it relates or does not to what goes on on the inside – and the body as a vehicle for the self.

I am interested in how what happens on the inside (thinking, feeling) can manifest on the surfaces of the body. The physical body (and the skin) holds the memories of the events and people who have been part of our lives. I wonder about how the shadows of past events and relationships as well as those happening now are held and reflected in and on the surface of our bodies.

I want in the future to think more about how our culture alienates us from ourselves and from our bodies. We develop a relationship with and to ourselves that is mediated by capitalism which relies on our 'need' to consume and to be perpetually at odds with our selves and our bodies. I am curious about how capitalisms values are embodied and are both felt within and displayed upon the surface of our bodies.

We play many parts; female and male, a boy, a girl, a mother, daughter, a wife, a teacher, a student. Each of these roles brings an identity with it each of which is infused with power relationships. There is no neutrality. Our differences do not exist against a neutral backdrop and our 'difference' threatens.

We are flesh and blood – but we are what we feel and we are what we think, we are our reflections and our memories. There are layers of self, true and false selves, internal others and real and imagined figures from both our internal and external worlds. I am trying to bring together these ideas with the images that I make of the body and to think also about the health of my body (physical and mental) and consider it in relation to my developing therapeutic work. I am a being with a mind and a body (which I can sometimes forget) and I am working to integrate and connect with myself through my art making and to work out what it is to be embodied.

Other things to think about at some point:
Plato's shadows on the wall
Locke's personal identity and memory
Collective identity and invented tradition (Bataille, Hobsbawm)
Bakhtin, carnivalesque and inverting social norms
The social construction of the female body and sexuality

M(other)

the little girl kneels patiently...

waiting for her mother to be born. the bowl contains all the stories about the journey they are yet to share with one another.

Broken into pieces

abandoned peace

we were all babies once

The Language of Art Therapy

object

part object
self object

differentiation
affect
impingement
potential space
good enough mother
introjection
projection
transference
countertransference
depressive state
schizoid state
defence
the image
embodied
contained
not knowing
conscious
unconscious
psychodynamic
narcissism
false and true self
transitional object
the 'as if'
compliance
denial
acting out
authentic
difference
resonance
attunement
ambivalence
holding
attachment
boundaries
splitting
disassociating
here and now
there and then


"to discover and to make something new demands courage and the ability to bear doubt and pain and all the anxieties that are provoked when one jetissons what is old and familiar and risks innovation - that is the forming of something new, something as yet unknown" R. Gordon, Dying and Creating: A Search for Meaning, 1978

compliance and the environment 3 generations

In denial

Every body

"working it all out – I start early and each time I come back I respond to something I like or do not"

The early stages were plagued by apprehension and anxiety. Serenaded by heart palpitations and a skin rash my body responded to high levels of cortisol and adrenaline pumping through my veins. I was overwhelmed by the 'not knowing' and confronted directly with my desire and need to work it all out I ponder the expectations placed on me by tutors in order to orientate myself to these expectations and meet them.

I wonder how robust my ego is: my ability to sit with my experiences and to learn about myself in the midst of strong emotional and physical reactions. I struggle and as it is I can just about navigate my way through the tidal waves of learning and hold my course while trusting that by taking responsibility for my own learning at some point all the new experiences will come together. I can hold the faith because I have some prior knowledge and experience of myself feeling as I do right now. At 19 years old, a year and a bit into studying social anthropology I was so overwhelmed and exposed by intense learning and new experiences that I had to leave and take a year out to recoup. And, before returning I had to pursuade tutors that I was sane enough to be let back in!

At the Handmade House

exhausted bodies

I think this might be art therapy?