~ the interplay of line & colour ~

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Jacques Derrida (philosopher b. 1930 – 2004)  theory considers that the act of drawing is unassociated to anything concrete, whereby correlations between producing a work with an outcome are divided.  The hand eye movement perceives a level of cognitive thinking and knowledge as the pencil makes contact with paper.  More specifically it is about the process and activated experience that defines a drawing ~ a movement in-between which Derrida suggests is a blind, spontaneous or gestural action ‘and is to be regarded the definition of drawing’.

~ Strong, thick and soft tonal lines of ink can mark a surface of paper but it is in the concentrated act of the material point of a pencil and its contact that determines the visual language and interpretation of a drawing not the image itself.

finding my own voice…

A few years ago I found this book on the library shelf, or perhaps more accurately, this book found me.  It has some of the most enriching stories I have ever read. The author is a keeper of the old stories in the Latina tradition and senior Jungian psychoanalyst.  Her words speak to the very depths of a woman’s soul, spirit and mind.  Lately, I have been asking myself, who am I and where do I belong but as much as I have been trying to find her she seems to elude me.   I have been stuck, pushing against the things in life that seem to continually squash me/her.   But I realize I have been searching in the wrong places, ‘it’ can’t be found externally, nor in anyone else.  The strength and anchor and person I have been searching for already resides within me… not my twin, not in my family or friends, but within me.  I know I now need to find my way back to the very centre and core of who I am because it’s there I will find my anchor, the space in which I belong.  From this position a new kind of strength, love and courage will begin to grow and I will find a way to value her again.  Following is an extract of where my journey may begin…

“….The archetype of the Wild Woman and all that stands behind her patroness to all painters, writers, sculptors, dancers, thinkers, prayer makers, seekers, finders – for they are all busy with the work of inventions, and that is the instinctive nature’s main occupation.  As in all art, she reside in the guts, not in the head.  She can track and run and summon and repel.  She can sense, camouflage, and love deeply.  She is intuitive, typical, and normative.  She is utterly essential to women’s mental and soul health.  So what compromises the Wild Woman?  From the view point of archetypal psychology as well as in ancient tradition, she is the female soul.  Yet she is more; she is the source of the feminine.  She is all that is of instinct, of the worlds both seen and hidden – she is the basis.  We each receive from her a glowing cell which contains all the instincts and knowings needed for our lives.

…She is the Life / Death / Life force, she is the incubator.  She is intuition, she is far-seer, she is deep listener, she is loyal heart.  She encourages humans to remain multi-lingual, fluent in the languages of dreams, passion, and poetry.  She whispers from night dreams, she leaves behind on the the terrain of a woman’s soul a coarse hair and muddy footprints.  These fill women with longing to find her, free her, and love her.

…She is ideas, feelings, urges, and memory.  She has been lost and half forgotten for a long, long time.  She is the source, the light, the night, the dark and daybreak.  She is the smell of good mud and the back leg of the fox.  The birds which tell us secrets belong to her.  She is the voice that says, ‘this way, this way’.

…She is the one who thunders after injustice.  She is the one who turns like a great wheel.  She is the maker of cycles.  She is the one we leave home to look for.  She is the one we come home to.  She is the mucky root of all women.  She is the things that keep us going when we think we’re done for.  She is the incubator of raw little ideas and deals.  She is the mind which thinks us, we are the thoughts that she thinks.

Where is the present?  Where can you feel her, where can you find her?  She walks the deserts, woods, oceans, cities, in the barrios and in castles.  She lives among queens, among campesinas, in the boardroom in the factor in the prison in the mountain of solitude.  She lives in the ghetto at the university and in the streets.  She leaves footprints for us to try for size.  She leaves footprints wherever there is one woman who is fertile soil. 

Where does she live?  At the bottom of the wheel, in the headwaters, in the ether before time.  She lives in the tear and in the ocean.  She lives in the cambia of trees, which pings as it grows.  She is from the future and from the beginning of time.  She lives in the past and is summoned by us.  She is in the present and keeps a chair at our table, stands behind us in line, and drives ahead of us on the road.  She is in the future and walks backward in time to find us now.

…She lives in the green poking through snow, she lives in the rustling stalks of dying autumn leaves, she lives where the dead come to be kissed and the living send their prayers.  She lives in the place where language is made. She lives on poetry and percussion and singing.  she lives on quarter notes and grace notes, and in a cantta, in a sestina, and in the blues.  She is the moment just before inspiration bursts upon us.  She lives in a faraway place that breaks through to our world.

…People may ask for evidence, for proof of her existence. They are essentially asking for proof of the psyche. Since we are the psyche, we are also the evidence.  Each and every one of us is the evidence of not only Wild Woman’s existence, but of her condition in the collective.

We are the proof of this ineffable female numen.  Our existence parallels hers.  Our experiences of her within and without are the proofs.  Our thousands and millions of encounters with her intra-physically through our night dreams and our day thoughts, through our yearnings and inspirations, these are the verifications.  

The fact that we are separated from her; these are the manifestations that she has passed this way…..

(Author:  Clarissa Pinkola Estes) 

frames & bodies

frames & bodies:
Square Peg in a Round Hole  

My final year BFA(Hons), UoA research focused on the analytical effects of self reflexivity, exploring how life and art converge. In particular, the circular relationships between cause v’s effect, process v’s freedom and psychoanalytic interpretation.  The impact of visual affect and subjectivity were examined through my own twin-self and twin-ship experience, forming an alternative space for un-languaged expression.

A hermeneutic interpretation of a contemplative space manifests a deeper level of awareness, often presenting and confronting one’s human solidarity. Being aware elicits movement in thinking, as an ongoing exercise of reflexivity upon our relational realities in, and to the world. To contemplate includes both a lived experience and an understanding of the environmental structures that shape our lives.

The metaphor Square Peg in a Round Hole provides a map for understanding the fragmentation of self and twin-ship relationships, which shift between the conscious and unconscious elements of perception and interpretation.

The relational interweaving of machine and hand sewn bodies alongside the raw materiality of built frames, intentionally function as exposures of interior and exterior spaces paired with the human body and fragmented environment.