ART AND EMOTIONAL WELLBEING: A BEAUTIFUL SONG IN ANOTHER LANGUAGE

ART AND EMOTIONAL WELLBEING 

'The impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned', writes Annie Dillard, 'is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you.  You open your safe and find ashes'. Quoted from 'This Sunrise of Wonder' by Michael Mayne.

Chania Harbour. Oil on panel 10x30. G. Sfougaras 2015

'A BEAUTIFUL SONG IN ANOTHER LANGUAGE'

It is funny how some important things in our lives happen as a result of accidents.  Of course, it could be argued that these 'accidents' are simply the congruence of experiences.  Whatever the reason for new insights and new ideas, or congruences, I experienced one last week. I went to the central library, to look at the art books.  It was a random act, based more on the fact that I need a variety of experiences and different spaces, now that I am in control of my daily timetable.

I picked up a book, an autobiographical book by Andrew Wyeth, one of my all-time favourite artists. The images were familiar, well most of them...but it was the words, it was the description of what his pictures meant to him that really changed something in me. Yes, I know that seems quite a statement. I have read many artists' writings on their work, and I suppose they never really affected me. They seemed somewhat...contrived, I am not sure how else to put it. Here, however, was a man, a man that wrote simply.  In a way, I was envious of this easy prose, his honesty. 

I read his descriptions and was struck, by the way the words and the images worked so well together and enriched my understanding. This surprised me enormously because I have always evangelised about how art needs no prose to support it; I have always believe that a painting says it in its own way; no need for anything else. Why paint it AND write about it? It always felt to me somehow like saying the same thing twice...or even taking something away from the painting.  But the cardinal sin for me, was always the waffle; the endless nonsense that some tutors on my degree courses and some critics spout about art.  I shiver at the thought of the gigantic pile of ....art criticism levelled at poor Fine Art students at universities around the world.

Having taught all my life, you would think that I had already worked this one out. Sadly, no. When I look back, I had always encouraged students to analyse others' work and indeed taught them how to do this. I have in the past created frameworks and scaffolds, writing frames, prompts, encouragement and reasons for doing this.  Somehow I remained immune to this in my own work...and confession time: I have always found it boring and saw it simply as something you did when you were learning about art, not really something that you ever need to do once you have matured as an artist (if ever, but that is another story).

So then, it was a revelation to be reading these statements by Andrew Wyeth. It was surprising. Stalks of corn became in his mind a man with teeth and one without.  A quilt was compared to a festival. Empty pots and a pan somehow described for him the dead neighbours, still there in their absence. 

From 2012 to 2015, I had the pleasure of working in an educational setting that supported young people dealing with physical, emotional and psychiatric challenges. The artwork  that these brilliant students created was at times free from the normal conventions that characterise adolescent work in mainstream schools. Working in that environment was a catalyst for a really good look at one's own frame of reference. The work there, brief by comparison to my 30 year teaching experience, allowed me to reflect on the way that we relate to each other and to the world around us. It unmasked my own struggles to find effective strategies to cope with adversity and highlighted the fact that mental health is actually a huge spectrum of human behaviours and experiences of our surroundings. 

I would call those years, hugely significant, and challenging. After this commitment came to an end and  I have had a few precious months to reflect, I can see how important our emotional landscape is, especially in our creative work. I have come to realise that I really need to explore the hidden subconscious messages that we send to ourselves and others through our work.

These messages are subtle and often lost. If I could compare it to anything tangible, if I was to try and say it through a meaningful metaphor, I would compare it to hearing a song in another language. We might love the song, but without some help with the lyrics, a large portion of the experience is lost on us. In this website, I will attempt to decipher the messages in my own work.  To use the above metaphor, I will attempt to translate  this beautiful song for me, and anyone else listening. 

What will become apparent very quickly is that I have a lot more to say about some works than some others.  The volume of what I have to say, corresponds to the 'inner' dialogue that I have had with the work; that is to say the story, the feelings, the need to create the image in a very particular way.   I hope some readers will see part of themselves in the work and they will connect with some of the stories.  Perhaps Jung's collective unconscious, despite the difficulties it presents (due  to the 'mythological' aspect of such a model) has something to contribute to the way we  relate to the narrative of a painting at a spiritual level. I will explore this elsewhere, but for the time being, I would be grateful for your views; there are  forms on each page, to help me improve the content, so thanks in advance if you are prepared to feedback and help me to make this site as meaningful as possible for all visitors. 

George Sfougaras July 2015