An Introduction to My Art
I come from the place of the psychoanalytic psychotherapist. Over the years I practiced therapy in parallel with my interest in literature and art. This served as something of a creative and reflective space, or if you will, a 'transitional space' for my thoughts and feelings. Beyond this, I became increasingly interested in the poetic and aesthetic aspects of engagement within an analytic space and how this affected the work. It is the very thing that I now wish to represent in my art, by way of metaphore, and by the nature of my engagement with the art itself; as it is said, "how you tell the story decides what story is told.
For me the creative process involved in psychotherapy, writing or painting is a similar one. The author A.S. Byatt has described this process as "rendering" a term she has borrowed from the novelist Ford Maddox Ford, the act of restoring, giving, yielding or returning something. As the writer renders his object and subject, so the therapist and painter render theirs. I have always thought of myself as part of this process and in this sense the transition from therapist to painter/artist is relatively seamless and carries with it that which is essentially myself. Clearly my story as a psychoanalytic therapist has been written, but as an artist, my story remains unfinished.
In my artistic work I am particularly interested in the dialogue that exists between ourself as subject and object. I am reminded of a sculpture I have on my sideboard at home. It is that of a small man sculpted from rock. He stands about 35cm high, his feet firmly planted, his spine is arched backwards and he looks skywards, a grimace on his face, as he struggles to hold in his hands a large roughly hewn rock. The flatness of his face marks him unmistakably as an Inuit, an Eskimo from the North East of Alaska. One can imagine he has mined the rock he now holds. He is a sculptor and is carrying it down from the mountains to sculpt it, not just any image, but in that of his own for he is made of that very same material. He makes himself of it and it makes itself of him. If one is missing then both are missing; one is of the other.
I am in agreement with the philosophical notion that we are in essence biological organisms and that this sits in relationship to our mind. The idea that we exist somewhere between brain and mind, object and subject as part of our human condition; that this composes what might be called the mystery of life. In my view it is this mystery that enters the space of the artist, and composes the base material of the duality that forms the conversation between our self and our work.
I reflect on the existential space where art resides, where fantasy lives, where reality meets the imagined, where that which is conscious meets the unconscious, where order and structure meet the diffuse, where the primitive, with its inherent violence and capacity for love is melded, to find expression in the human domain through the artistic process. It would seem to embody a particular attitude to life or to quote Wittgenstein to “a soul.” I find such an attitude in the eyes, the face and the body captured at given a moment in time. It is for this reason that in some of my work, my drawings in particular, the focus is on the eye, its vacancy, its occupation, its preoccupation or even its paranoia, as well as the face, which may convey much of that which lies underneath, or which on the other hand may hide it. At other times I try to touch on existence through the metaphor of abstraction, which is beyond words and beyond the subjectivity of the image.
In the piece Silence that he might hear his silence a small boy is depicted holding the hand of his soldier father who has recently returned from the war. The father knows nothing of his son. The child has been yearning for his father but has no idea of how to relate to this strange man, who he has never seen before, yet is his father. They have the same face, both are sad. They look away from each other. They clasp hands, that is all there is. It is this I have tried to convey in the emptiness of the three panels, the emptiness of the room. ”Silence that you may hear his Silence.”
In the early 1980’s I first began to draw and to paint. I became fascinated with the image as a representation of one’s internal world. Over the next 30 years I produced 4000 cartoons and sketches, some mere scribbles, others of more artistic merit. They reflected my work as a psychiatrist and embodied what might be described as the irony of life. I have captured some of these early impressions in the form of 40 prints I have euphemistically called In the Eye of the beholder. These images stare out at theviewer and require some sort of response. They are not of reality, they come from an internal world, part object, part subject, and seek to convey a particular feeling be it angst, depression, paranoia or what one may have. I think it is advantageous to view them as a group, but each as an individual piece has something to say. The subjective narrative as I like to think of it, is continued in the form of twelve large canvases. I have called them a Journey of the Soul. My wish is to convey the human condition from inside out so to speak, our lives, our sadness, our loneliness, our joy of living, the irony of life. These paintings are in part of the subject and in part of the object, their line and imagery quite simple. I wish them to impinge on the viewer’s senses and to involve him or her in the process, that they might stand close to the painting as part of themselves, or view it from some distance away. I would hope their titles give some clue to the individuality as well as to this story. Tightrope, Blue Enigma, Soldier Father (3 panels), Pink Dragon, Dido, Aeneas, In the Shadow of the Object (the man), Unbroken Line (Embryo), Dancing Lady, Night Crowd, Repose, Angst.
In parallel with this I have been preoccupied with another narrative, one of a more objective or abstract nature. Woman is the beginning of this journey. It consists of ten canvases each of which depicts the face of a woman. In this I am focused on that which we see, the face, the surface, the mask, the masquerade, the symbol. The face divided vertically and horizontally, symmetrically, the nose and mouth mere lines, the eye the only window to the subject- a subject in a sea of object–sameness, a repetition, and an unknowable. They are best regarded as a group, their story is then fully told, but they also may stand in their own right as individual pieces.
This is followed by a three-canvas piece entitled Nidus. Here a finely sculpted space is created by several large forms, which may be seen to contain both subjective and objective elements. The representation is characterized by a stillness in which the forms are defined by their relationship to each other as well as by their own particular shape. One might regard such a space as a source, an origin, where something new is to be created and nurtured. Alternatively it could be seen as an aperture, an opening to the internal or external world of the unknown.
The abstraction of the human figure continues in the Enigma series. It is composed of twelve large canvases, on which are depicted humanoid forms in dialogue and in movement. The ‘eye,’ the ‘mouth,’ the ‘breast,’ ‘the genitals,’ in discourse, and perhaps intercourse. The progressive loss of individuality and ultimate fusion, the images both intensely human and objective. One may be preoccupied with the figures themselves or with the space in between which narrows until it is a line, which finally disappears.
In the eleven-panel work entitled Life Circle, life space has given way to an existential space, a white mark, to a circle, which occupies the darkness. From its beginning to end, life has a moment here, it is mortal; the images expanding to their zenith before denouement and disappearance. Tightly formed, stark, unremitting and unforgiving, there is no subject here just perfect form, which one may call art. “..… until in this middle ground which we call life, somewhere between nothing and nothing, hangs the perfect thing, which we love and cannot understand, but which we are compelled to confess a work of art.” (Theodore Dreiser.)
The piece entitled Passages deals with the issue of space from a different viewpoint. It consists of four interlocking canvases, which can be viewed as a whole or as separate pieces each with its own coherence. It is composed of large white forms that move as if they have a life of their own. They are imperfect yet the eye seeks to make them otherwise. In contrast to this the dark passages, the negative space, the ways through the maze of shapes and obstruction, a path well traveled or one that awaits its journey.
The narrative continues in the form of nine canvases, contiguous with each other, in which the white space occupies the central area and is surrounded by black. Once again the life cycle is represented in the multiple canvases. Taken together the white space is seen to enlarge toward the central canvas before reducing in size towards the end. In this sense it is symmetrical. I have entitled this work Container/Contained. This is a psychoanalytic term which I have coined to attend to the fact that existence does not occur in a vacuum, but rather as a space within a space, within which we define ourselves and seek to live our lives.
Beyond this is the question of what occupies the space in which we find ourselves. Do we create the ‘living thing’ ourselves, contoured, shaped, defined, or do we ultimately just imagine? Is it that we are a mere reflection of that which surrounds us, our very being an expression of such a reality, which if taken to its logical conclusion, would lead us to the notion that all is one. It is this interaction that I have endeavored to capture in my piece entitled Assemblage. This is composed of eleven canvases on board. In this depiction ill-defined patterns precede the gradual assembly of recognizable features towards the central object, followed by disassembly as life proceeds towards toward its end. In this work I utilize templates in an effort to capture the organic nature of life, to dissect and to shape the dark background, representing the existential space, which itself may be seen to create in it contrast, the life represented in the templates.
It could be said that we try to catch our experience, our reflections, through the metaphor of abstraction, beyond words, beyond the external image. At other times one might see it in the portrayal of the subject as the image itself. One is reminded of the ‘forms’ of Plato, the largely unconscious universal feelings, images, pre-thoughts, that inhabit all of our worlds providing the underlying substrata of all that we are and all that we do. It is this I try and capture in the narratives to which I have alluded. I ask the viewer to accompany me on this journey, this search for meaning and to hopefully have an experience that has some meaning for them. It is a beginning; the rest is unknown.
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Tim Blashki
