Project Plan: Art Therapy

Check out my project plan for Art Therapy.  This was created on Piktochart.com the link to the poster is here: Art Therapy: Project Plan

Final Show: Moodboard Creation

The concept of a final show is always challenging as all the elements have to really work together consistently to ensure that the work displayed is showcased well.  This requires excellent planning and curation of all elements.  So to begin I have created a moodboard of the kind of colours, typography and framing that I might employ in my own (conceptual) show.

I actually was really quite pleased with this as I really like the greys and I think this work really well with the photographs and other works that I would like to use in the show.  The tagline 'She looked upon her creation and she saw that it was good' I really want to use as I think this will be a great selling point and will emphasise that this is a show by a woman and it will be GOOD!

The typography I want it to be clear and readable using san serif fonts very straight lines.  The wooden black frames should be clean and simple throughout and emphasis the images shown.

I am really looking forward to creating the logo and poster next week as I think this should really come together...

Project Sign Off: Beginning with Eve

I have decided and developed my ideas and now I am adding my project sign off here: Art Therapy Project

To begin I am adding some new work which is just using digital photography and Photoshop:

Again I am just playing with ideas about what I would like to express through this work - I like this idea of the weight of life, - the weight of creation refers to Eve as all women could descend from Eve if you believe this...

Eve Tempted, Manchester Art Gallery

(c.1877)

By John Roddam Spencer Stanhope (1829–1908)

Although Eve is portrayed as the one who tempts Adam to sin, Eve is 'cursed' by God with the following: I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing, with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you' Genesis 3:16

Here, in my own image, the weight of creation still bears down on womankind and still we bear that weight of the carrier, nurturer and often still considered the weaker sex.  I believe here this is where we are strongest as women do bear weight, a weight that if it was given to the man he may find himself crushed by it!

Exploring Online Tools and Developing Project Ideas

So this week we are exploring online tools to develop our project ideas and I have been investigating further infographic and workflow tools to show my own development.  I created this Art Therapy: Project Development Ideas.  I enjoyed creating this as it helped me to think about what I really wanted to explore and HOW I was actually going to do this - check it out fully by the link above.

There are many online tools this one was visme.com.  But there are many more to explore - you can look up online flowchart maker or infographics software online. 

Object Lesson: Sense of Identity 2

Continuing on my theme of art therapy

I started sketching thoughts and began with these - the idea here is just that I think I feel most pain deep inside my stomach and I always feel this is where all the emotion lives.  I like the distorted body here.

This is liked for the darkness on half the image and the light on the other half as I feel often I live half in the light and half in darkness - so when the darkness comes there is a sense of being in a black hole where there is no hope ....

Obviously, my drawings here are not in any way 'good' but they are expressive of the feeling and the idea - and I will use this idea to expand upon my project ideas - I don't have a gallery room like Tracey Emin but I have this blog so that I can keep sharing this work as I create it.  There will be more - I am looking forward to seeing how this develops. 

Object Lesson: Sense of Identity

The object I chose to explore was Matryoshka dolls.  I have a few in my home and people seem to like these the idea of one person inside another until you reach the tiniest one. So I took a few photos of them. 

I just played about a little with here while I was thinking about them.  As I said in my first post I was interested in art as therapy as a theme for this term and these dolls are all about identity as each one inside the other is an identity of its own but lived as part of the whole.

This idea that we are lots of people is, again, not new, but I think exploring different parts of the self as therapy in different mediums and forms could be an interesting idea to start thinking about as a project.  

Another artist who struggles with her identity and used art as therapy was Frida Kahlo.  As she was in a life-altering accident when the bus she was travelling on hit a streetcar and she was impaled by a steel handrail causing her to have serious damage to her hips and spine when she young, she spent her life having a series of operations to try to correct this and was bedridden often as a result.  Kahlo painted and drew from her bed and also underwent psychological testing that is recorded in the book 'Song for Herself' by Salomon Grimberg.  

Portrait of Irene Bohus (1947) by Frida Kahlo

Kahlo writes; 'A self-portrait made in bed was another [when discussing paintings she had made], and since I did it when I did not want to eat, I painted it with a funnel' (Grimberg S. 2008: 63), Kahlo, due to illness, physical disability and depression found ways and perhaps reasons to live through her work and this reflects the power of creation - when designing, creating, making something that is coming from deep inside this is deep therapy and a way of communicating with the world.  

So considering these initial thoughts.  I would like to use mixed media in the sense of Anselm Kiefer or Tracey Emin to create a project that explores my own self but I am hoping reaches some universal meaning that will communicate to those who care to look. 

References

Biography.com (2020) Frida Kahlo [Online] Available from: https://www.biography.com/artist/frida-kahlo (Accessed 30/03/20)

Grimberg S (2008) Frida Kahlo, Song to Herself, Merell Publishers Ltd, London. 

Welcome to a New REMOTE Term!

Here we are again but this term all work will be remote and online therefore our goal has to be as innovative and creative with our projects as possible. 

So to begin this term as I know that out there you are all living in the age of anxiety I am going to look at Art as Therapy.  This is not a new concept and I think it may appeal as I have always felt by picking up my camera I feel a sense of calm.

Tracey Emin locked herself in a room for 14 days (sound familiar!) as therapy and she created 97 works of art.

Image from: Exorcism of the last painting I ever made (1996) by Tracey Emin

So, Emin did lock herself in a room and just made paintings, installation and anything she could as therapy 'Tracey Emin lived in a locked room in a gallery for fourteen days, with nothing but a lot of empty canvases and art materials, in an attempt to reconcile herself with paintings. Viewed through a series of wide-angle lenses embedded in the walls, Emin could be watched, stark naked, shaking off her painting demons. Starting by making images like the artists she really admired (i.e. Egon Schiele, Edvard Munch, Yves Klein), Emin's two-week art-therapy session resulted in a massive outpouring of autobiographical images, and the discovery of a style all her own. The room was extracted in its entirety, and now exists as an installation work.' (Saatchigallery: Tracey Emin)

There are many artists who have used art specifically as therapy but it is perhaps all artists who do this in some way.  Releasing there innermost demons, thoughts, desires, political motivations, struggles with identity etc. 


So this term art therapy is what we need!


References

Saatchi Gallery (2020) Artists Pages: Tracey Emin [Online] Available from: https://www.saatchigallery.com/artists/artpages/tracey_emin_painting_6.htm (Accessed 30/03/20)

Hochberger C. (26/03/20) Artspace: Why is Art Therapeutic 6 Artists whose practices helped them cope [Online] Available from: https://www.artspace.com/magazine/art_101/in_depth/why-is-art-therapeutic-6-artists-whose-practices-helped-them-cope-56518 (Accessed 30/03/20)