My work this year is based around sexual child abuse and its’ repercussions.
There have been many media reports on this subject in recent times and several public figures have been shown to have been abusers of children. Jimmy Saville and Rolf Harris, are probably, the most notable of late. There has been widespread child abuse within the Catholic Church, much of it either ignored or covered up. It has also come to light that files have gone missing, regarding paedophile allegations within the corridors of political power. Being a survivor of this heinous crime myself, this is a subject that is particularly close to my heart.
My first piece of work is a painting. It was inspired by a poem written by myself, from a place of deep despair.
The darkness beckons,
I am standing on the edge.
My senses numb, I face the deep abyss.
It caresses me with its’ gentle whisperings.
Come to me, I will ease your pain.
I will take away your betrayals,
your disappointments.
I will take away your sense of hopelessness.
Bring me your tears,
Bring me your deepest sorrows.
And in return, I offer you…Oblivion.
I realised that this piece of work would be within the context of the Sublime and so I started with that.
Edmund Burke’s sublime, was associated with pain and danger. For him; the main causes of the sublime were darkness, magnificence, adversity or vastness. He related these qualities with terror rather than elation.
More information is available at:
http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/display/art-and-sublime
Immanuel Kant’s interpretation focussed more on the concept as a mental condition, or as an aesthetic experience emerging from the strain of perceiving something infinite or boundless.
More information is available at:
http://www.wisdomportal.com/Cinema-Machine/Kant-Beautiful&Sublime.html
My own feeling of the sublime, for this piece of work, comes from a place of pain and emotional darkness and will be represented by a stormy sky (a maelstrom of emotions) and a tiny figure standing literally ‘on the edge’ both physically and emotionally, quite alone, in the vastness of the landscape and in her suffering.
I then looked at artists of the sublime to see how they realised their ideas in order to expand my own. This is usually the way I work, Idea – Artist Research – Start work. Sometimes I will make sketches at other times I will access images from the internet, it depends very much on what the project is that I am embarking on.
