Psychological Drawings

My project is based around the theoretical perspective of how art impacts the psyche of the artist and the audience. I put myself in the position of the artist, the scientist and the subject to be able to fully comprehend how my art, when limited by sight and time, is effective in representing my own psyche through my graph-like illustrations. For example, my drawings when combined would represent my internal perspective on my self image, focused on the more ‘important’ aspects of my face. Therefore, my work would be representative of a document, accurate in what it represents, as opposed to what it presents. My source material was initially based on Professor Robert Sapolsky’s teachings on human behavioural biology, however, I also was hugely inspired by the blindfold drawings of Claude Heath from 1996.

This theme is important to me as although I am a very creative individual, I am also fascinated by psychology and human behavioral biology. My particular target audience would be a more scientific audience, possibly those who would be interested in connecting more to art, under circumstances that they can understand.

The techniques and processes I used to make the main body of my art (the graph-like, red ink drawings) were based solely in drawings. These drawings were limited to a maximum time frame of two and a half minutes per day. As well as this, I limited my use of materials with this project and only used red ink on A4 high quality paper. My work is refrained in using these materials because I wanted to create a link to the scientific process in creating a ‘control’. As well as this, I believe that the use of ink, as opposed to pencil, is more definite in terms of ‘accidental’ marks. Although these outliers should be understood as negligible impacts over time, it is still important that they are addressed, in order to fully combine the scientific process of graph-making with drawing.

My work has developed exponentially from there on, in terms of the strength between the combination of scientific and artistic processes. These developments have been characterized by: the clear increased level of comfort in the creation of these images and the time frame they have stuck to; the connections between a scientific process of drawing graphs and the processes used to create the images; and mostly the sheer number of images produced within the second semester, in comparison to the first. This multidisciplinarymindset is important because the links between science and art are present yet underreported.

I had started work on my self-portraits. The work developed from then on as I experimented with technique. After this trialling, I decided to settle on having some rules for the completion of my work, therefore I gave myself two minutes and thirty seconds per portrait and I looked only at my own face whilst drawing and refrained from looking at the paper. I used red ink on a plain white A4 paper, as I intended on photocopying and editing these images together at the end of my project. At this point in time, I became set on this project composing of solely an array of self-portraits and a mass of these drawings into one image to see a graph-like picture, in which the work could mimic scientific evidence. One artist in which was a huge stimulation for this idea was Claude Heath who, created his project named “Blindfold Drawings”. According to 'Don't look now' by Tom Lubbock, The Independent, 8 October 2002: 'It's difficult to work out what Claude Heath's drawings depict, and there's a good reason for that: he draws them blind. But however tangled they appear, even the least intelligible are a tribute to the power and scope of the human mind...that is where the force and fascination of these pictures lies, the way a pursuit of patient exploration hits the limit of what you can get your head round... These images don't just show the world from some kind of unusual angle. They show the human mind, its limits, and its weird ability to outstretch itself.’(Lubbock, 2002)

The drawings had progressed hugely in terms of the volume of them and over time, this contributed to my project's success. It was at this point in which I became aware of the impact of the work on myself. I started to become aware that the most successful pieces were the ones littered with acne scars, wonky eyeballs and facial features which had disappeared in the rush to complete the image. I believe that this project links to the topic of ‘document’ in the context that these drawings, although inaccurate, selfishly flattering and in some cases, downright stupid looking, present a truth which is deeper than that a camera could connect with. These images present the truth in how I could possibly see myself through the eyes of the subconscious. Therefore, one argument that was present within the lecture, which my work distinctly disputes against, is the following quotation: “You see a document has a use, whereas art is really useless. Therefore art is never a document, although it can adopt that style.” (Evans (1971)).

“Can art be used as a psychological document?” it is evident that it can and should be used as such. Walker Evans’ argument is limited due to his pre-conceived notions based on his background in photography. Despite this, it is part of human flaw that we believe naïvely in a superior answer, and Evans’ reasonings are limited to him alone, and not the side of the historic debate that he resides in. The wider idea as to why art cannot be seen as a document, is because of the aesthetic purposes behind artwork and the apparent need for factual information, as opposed to qualitative evidence. The humanity behind such pieces, is the very source of this documentation which can be applied to psychological reasonings. The importance of art as a psychological document connects back to the term iconoclasm. This referral of art as a bond for communities highlights the importance behind the purposes behind artistic pieces and showcases the devastation which could have occurred, had they never existed. This is because we, as humans, don’t typically experience life through written information, but rather we understand appearance and make connections to experiences with pictures, using neurohormone markers. Furthermore, we subconsciously understand this imagery through colour and shape theory.

Allan Sekula argues that we have “A naïve faith in both the privileged subjectivity of the artist, at the one extreme, and the fundamental “objectivity” of photographic realism” (Sekula, 1976). This connection to the importance of audience interpretation and disregard of aporia on the part of society links to Derrida’s theory of deconstruction. Through these connections we can understand art as a manuscript of psychology and the importance of both information that values factual data, and material which more supports qualitative.