I've been thinking a lot about my feedback from the Unit One assessment and have been re forming my study statement to sharpen the focus of what I'm looking at. For now, I've tried to distill things into a paragraph that attempts to describe things:
I'm interested in how the process of drawing connects with voice, feeling and human experience. I'm currently looking at how people today and through history have used repetition and ritual to seek both existential and emotional clarity. I'm contemplating why we feel compelled to repeat visits to certain places, memories, and actions, and how this can be represented in abstract forms on paper through drawing and painting methods that are inherently repetitive and somatic, with reference to the symbolism of circles. Through drawing in this way, I want to touch on how important anchoring and grounding is for humans today, as well as how it has been through history.
Images of pilgrimage, neolithic sites and the rhythm of the solstices will permeate my work – as I reflect on how they connect people, regardless of religious or spiritual leaning.
I am interested in why drawing to me, feels almost ritualistic, and how the motion, rhythm and repetition of it aids processing - which in turn chimes with why people gather in circular formations.
The next phase of my study will explore these themes through a variety of processes– but will also seek to connect more consciously with the physical act of making – and to ask - how do we feel when we draw or make? How do we feel when we gather together to be creative? How can these themes be explored experientially through repeated or cyclical art making? I will explore this in my practice as both artist and educator.
Some things I want to look at, in light of trying to delve more deeply into what has shaped and influenced me:
Drawing as ritual: I think about it a lot and have been acutely aware for many years how important drawing and creating has been to me as a way to anchor or ground myself in something tangible and familiar at a time when external forces felt turbulent and unpredictable and myself and my siblings were experiencing having a parent in care with acute psychosis. To me creating has been a ritual – one of comfort and hope. Something I knew could always belong to me.
Aside from drawing itself – I recognise that I had always performed ritualistic patterns and behaviours. I wonder now whether this has also been a coping mechanism. My husband is often bewildered by my almost addictive need to return to certain (and specific) places, where I feel a sense of belonging or peace.
Pilgrimage: Not just physical and definitely not religious. To places that are locked in memory as comforting. Conversely, a strong aversion to re visiting places with less favourable associations. A strong sense of energy in a place. Sensitive to surroundings.
Ancient Sites - tracks and lines of energy. Alignment and positioning.
Solstice – the ritual of hope – welcoming the sun and light. Needing these things to feel the gentle steps towards comfort and warmth
Repetition and ritual to aid comfort, to anchor and to feel grounded – to seek clarity and peace. To avoid turbulence and to escape. Seeking gatherings with female friends who have all shared experience.
The physicality of drawing– the physical motion of it, the feeling of calm I know I get from it. Wanting to share this with others.
Bilateral drawing – stimulated both hemispheres of the brain. Connecting thinking to feeling, which has an impact on trauma recovery. Can be used in therapy for grounding. Connecting explicit and implicit memory.
When I work with children or teachers to deliver art workshops, I hope that beyond any skills or knowledge they may build, that it serves to make them feel creatively fulfilled and a sense of wellness. I am motivated by the fact that others experiencing unrest may also find solace in creating too. This feels particularly pertinent at this time, when art is a subject so often over looked and yet, I think, is critical to protect for the reasons outlined above.
I love to gather people together to share a creative experience.
Through history – what form has this taken? Looking at ancient gatherings at spiritually or religiously significant locations such as stone circles
Circles themselves – the shape is inherently repeated and can be meditative.
It's also a shape that is contained. Why are we drawn to this feeling?
Circle dancing – ritual, meditation, companionship, shared experience – often women together. Circle symbolism in friendship.
Gathering - around fires (circles) Solstice but also to be creative together.
I have been feeling overwhelmed by all this really - chiefly because i'm holding up a mirror a bit more than before and am aware there's some emotional exposure involved with this.
That said, I'm also feeling strangely liberated and can't wait to step back into some more making. I agree with Jonathan that all the process led work up until now has paved a solid foundation for what's next but that now is the time to go a bit deeper.
Update November 2023
All of the above still central and part of where I'm at. Over the past several months more has developed in the areas of:
Neurobiological impact of implicit and narrative memory
Psychogeography
Maps - aerial and geological - as visual forms and how they can capture the concept of memory and re visiting.
Buried landscapes