An Artist’s Lament
As a creative individual who has had experience suffering from anxiety and depression, I often benefit from grounding myself in situations of extreme stress. Throughout my studies as a creative, I have found myself in more and more of these instances. I ground myself not only mentally but also in regards to my craft. I mean this in the sense that when I come across an obstacle, I ground myself by taking a step back and returning to the fundamentals, the basics of what I am aiming for. I applied this while searching for a solution for my artist book.
I would ground myself by looking to other artists who came before and inspired me. The artists depicted in this book are chosen from different mediums of artistry: fine art, film, and poetry. I chose to delve deeper into the more melancholy circumstances surrounding the artist’s personal life or their interpretations of life within their works. All the artists explored have dealt with mental or social issues in the course of their life or touched on these topics within their body of works. Relating back to my own personal experience with mental issues, I have feminised all the figures presented and each piece is meant to bring forth attention towards these, tackling the very real world issues of substance abuse, suicide, human relationships and conditions.
Each work comprises specific symbolism in the objects, shadows, lighting, make-up and clothing used and applied for each artist and their own story respectfully. Each composition is planned to detail each artist’s personal experiences in their own lives or explorations in their work relating to mental health.
As someone who has dealt with these issues personally, I have no ill intent in the scenes created and portrayed. My aim is to respectfully honour each case as my own sensitive artistic expression of grief as well as admiration for their work. This piece as a whole is not intended to glamourize or romanticise the scenes, events, issues or circumstances of each case. The overall intention is to pay homage, express empathy and to hopefully open a platform to discuss mental health.
