A phenomenological study of artistic practice/ mood disorders, where I developed a pedagogy for transformative self-inquiry. In 2008 the scope of this arts education framing implied depth psychology & healthcare, which have evolved with an updated trauma-informed somatic perspective of artistic experience.
Layers of lived experience. Seeds of our becoming. Listen, attend to those somatic impulses and signals. Give them the nurturance needed to crack open and affirmatively grow and produce new life.
This canvas reflected my embodied experience in learning to meditate and sit, settle, and allow the layers of identity to drop into the background of being. A 3D mask depicts a paper lay labyrinth of the mind.
The layers of our being pulsate, from the material body, through the energetic, emotional, mental, observer, and Source. When parts of us have been disassociated from self, our clear will, agency, and the power to act is diminished. Healing integrates parts back into the whole. Universal Life Force, from the Source and ground under all our being is an ever present, unshatterable and stable will of compassion, and graceful action. It is our life beat and innate impulse that we can trust, attuned to, and be attuned by.
This work was my visceral response to the triggering of 9/11 and the US/THEM polarity. It speaks not only to the violence towards Muslims & the Middle East, but how humans painfully reject and thus exile in ourselves that which we fear, is foreign, and difficult to understand or process. Embedded cultural photos of captured prisoners behind barbwire and my US family of origin photos juxtapose the bleeding wounds cut into the canvas. As a new yoga student, I choose these postures to inspire a dialogue of our social and personal justice, integration, and acceptance.
As part of my doctoral research, I read The Philosophy in the Flesh, a text that introduced me to academic concept of ‘embodiment’ a term my soul innately already knew. During this painting I was also excavating an inquiry of the pain around own body war, self image, and compulsive over-eating.
This work is an awareness of our mysterious, creative brain as key to understanding our lived experience and imagining. It also represent loss of my father to a brain tumor. It was a “preconsciousness” work, which with emergent insights on neuroscience and somatic experience, began my subjective theory of mind & the creative consciousness. 2 years later I translated it as a memorial gift with family photos, for a colleague who was dying of a similar brain tumor.
My yoga practice and Kripalu teacher certification introduced new ways of experiencing the layers of my body. Despite my methodist and later, contemporary Christian background, and struggle with depression & anxiety, the nondual experience of yoga as the union of MindBody, breath/movement revolutionized a deep non-judging self-compassion not previously known.
Inspired by the anatomical work of visionary artist, Alex Grey, this painting took over 3 years to complete. Influenced from the psychological interpretations of the chakras from yoga philosophy and the field of energy medicine.
As an undergrad art student I was fascinated with medical illustration and investigated entering medical School. Instead, I ended up marrying a doctor!
Pages were completed during 3 months of studio auto research.
335 page thesis copied for 4 committee members
Independent Media Center, Urbana IL
Joint art exhibition of works analyzed and created during the 6 month research studio work/discussion study.
Barefoot Wanderings Sabbatical Show, Salem State University