How do you feel? Growing Pains.
2012-2012
This series charts my inital foray into painting I started experimenting with paint, stanting with stick people and moving into acrylics. I wanted a looser, more automatic expression then what I had been creating digitally.
The focus here was not to make 'good' art but rather to connect to the parts of myself I had shut off. I added the stick people, I think to distance myself from the ongoing experience but also as away of representing myself - as the observer to my feelings.
I wrote the following few paragraphs, on reflection I can see how here I spoke about you, rather than me, or I. This is a typical stratgey, people and in this case, I used to create that distance between the self and uncomfortable feelings.
"How do you feel? Does anyone really know how they feel? When someone asks you how are you feeling, the typical answer is 'fine', 'tired', 'stressed', these aren't actually feelings, not in emotional sense. You see the trouble is most of the time people don't really know what they feel. Without knowing it we are constantly distracting ourselves from our feelings, whether it be by work, television, food, drugs or fantasy.
The craziness of it all is it is nobody’s fault. We're in a cage we didn't build. We were put on this planet for who knows what, with no instruction manual, no book telling us how to live or what to do. Yet we learn one thing early on, one profound thing that haunts us to our grave is, and that is, one day we will die.
The feelings of terror and dread around this simple fact, cannot be underestimated, it is no wonder that the distraction from self started early in our ancestral history. It started with man’s repeated to turn himself, through the accumulation of power and wealth, into god. And with the force of distraction being stronger than the force of acceptance he soon became separated from his essence. Today that distraction is as strong as ever. Millions of people get up every day and rush around filling themselves up with petty tasks.
Why? Because when you stop, you get closer to those uncomfortable feelings. Feelings that distract us from our distraction. But what are these uncomfortable feelings, and should we fear them? Should we continue to pretend they don’t exist? Or should we work on actually figuring out how to feel them? How to acknowledge them?
There are millions of people out there who would silently whisper, yes, many of whom find themselves crippled by apathy and lack luster living. In America in 2007 6.7 million people sought treatment for depression, most of which were subsequently medicated and hence shut off further from their feelings. Who decided it was better to go on not feeling? No one of course, no one ever just decides, but social norms happen. And having to feel all those painful feelings, well that would be horrific wouldn't?
The answer is yes, of course it would, but just because the feelings are horrific, doesn't mean they are bad. In fact quite the opposite, they are wonderful. The expression of deep sorrow, the expression of grief, of sadness of pain, is to be marveled at. And for the sake of humanity we need to start to start expressing."