these drawings are inspired by the Margaret Attwood poem 'morning in the burned house' which is a poem about grief and the loss of innocence. I found the poem particularly inspiring during the initial stages of my studio practice because I was still exploring themes surrounding the house - especially the house as a metaphor for the relationship between mind and body.
close your eyes and think of something just out of reach. where do you go when you fall asleep? where do your dreams exist? what are the feelings that you associate with this space? ask yourself: is it safe? is it happy? is it warm? am I free?
These are further drawings inspired by the idea of the concept of the house. my aim with these drawings was to evoke specific feelings:
feelings of being alone in the house at night
feelings of waking up to a moment of confusion
feelings of turbulence and uncertainty
the feeling of a locked attic and unvisited basement
these drawings are simply explorations around a theme. they aren't intended to be finished works, merely exercises.
one of the psychics I sent my dream to suggested I do a past life meditation. a past life meditation is a meditation that is supposed to take you on a journey through the past lives you have lived. I did one and it instructed me to 'visualize' certain landscapes and then write them down. Instead of writing down what I saw, I drew it - to the best of my ability
When I visualized my past life, this is what I saw. a multitude of stars in every colour there was. I saw bright white light and indecipherable and incomprehensible figure. I saw open and empty space, and after drawing it I realised these themes were paralleled within my other explorative drawings.
one of the psychics I sent my dream to talked about the idea of 'soul time' as a Timeless, Limitless and Infinite space that is both far away and in between; infinite and non-linear, and I felt like this tied into my initial exploration of the house and the house as a metaphor within my dreams, and then again with the past life meditation drawings. The idea that there is a space that exists inside my understanding of life that is unexplainable; something undefined and without parameters, and within this space is my understanding of life. This is something I've been interested in since first year - the idea of the human condition and the way we experience humanity. It was at this point in my exploration of ideas that I started to really understand the themes that existed within my work.
