SYNOPSIS

I’ve compiled a list of the main contemporary artists I’ve been researching in relation to the work I’m focussing on now – a focus on visualising emotions, looking again at german expressionism, which I’ve always had a strong connection with, I won’t list them as we all know them but see below if necessary.

Below is a compiled shortened list of what I read, artists I look at and what is behind my recent work –

Most of the reading I do is from psychological and psychiactric journals and books, the work that i develop to paintings/ etchings are from sketches i do in states of anger or dissociation. See below example of progression fro sketch to painting. I have been working on board with woodfiller which acts as an etching surface and allows aggressive marks to evolve. I’ve been focusing on 2 colours – representative of dichotonomy.

Artists

Interested in Missy Douglas’ project where she painted daily representing her moods after coming off her meds for bipolar t 2 to visualise the disorder. The project lasted one year. I cannot mimic but want to interrogate more the idea of representing what affects me most now which is emotional dyregulation. I want to visualise the shorter episodes and may develop this to be more representative of the survivors community rather than from just my individual experience.

https://www.thecollector.com/artists-who-depicted-traumatic-brutal-experiences-ww1/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4091823/

”Affect dysregulation, defined as the impaired ability to regulate and/or tolerate negative emotional states, and has been associated with interpersonal trauma and post-traumatic stress. Affect regulation difficulties also play a role in many other psychiatric conditions, including anxiety disorders and mood disorders, specifically major depression in youth and bipolar disorder throughout the life span.”

Dissociation is a mental process of disconnecting from one’s thoughts, feelings, memories or sense of identity.

When a person becomes emotionally dysregulated, they may react in an emotionally exaggerated manner to environmental and interpersonal challenges by displaying bursts of anger, crying, accusing, passive-aggressive behaviors, or by creating conflict. It is not unusual for a person to have poor reality testing when dysregulated—this relates to sensory pathways being shut down during the period of high emotional reactivity.

What artists have been expressing similar?

Nancy Princenthal’s Unspeakable Acts –

Marina Abramovic – Suzanne Lacy – Ana Mendieta (Sara Otten) – Adrian Piper

– challenging abuse externally

Anna Park

Arghavaan Khosravi – probes personal and political issues Iran. Reacted to Muslim ban USA.

Becky Suss – painter focusing on female generational family (positive light)

Cecili Brown

https://gagosian.com/artists/cecily-brown/

Christina Forrer – fokelore but without knowing content I read torture

https://www.luhringaugustine.com/artists/christina-forrer

Christina Quarrles

sexuality, queerness

Clare Woods

Much of Woods’ recent work is concerned with fragility, vulnerability, mortality and disability; the delicate border that exists between sickness and health, cruelty and humanity, and ultimately life and death. Perhaps this explains why bodies come to mind even when the images are not directly about them. Despite the varying degrees of brightly coloured abstraction and compositional distortions, Woods’ anthropomorphic studies bring to mind heads, limbs and torsos. It is like seeing the body through a distorted lens, defamiliarising and estranging it.