When I was little, I worried about everything. If I scratched my ear with my finger, I was worried that my fingernail fell off into my ear canal. If the seams of my socks weren't lined up in a particular way over my toes, it would ruin my whole day. When I was in fourth grade, I was punished for talking in class. I had to write, "I must not talk in class" one thousand times and hand it in to the teacher. I never turned it in, and I worried for a year and a half that the teacher was going to come after me, even after I left the school. As I got older, my episodes of worry and guilt became something that is now identified as anxiety attacks. Anxiety attacks often occur when I am in a state of transition (such as changing residences or traveling) or when I have made a decision about which I am unsure or regretful. They are as much physiological as they are psychological. During a panic attack my body temperature rises, I break out into a cold sweat, and I start shaking. I get very nauseated, sometimes to the point of throwing up. My arms and legs become numb, and I get extremely dizzy. I rarely cry during an anxiety attack; instead, I tend to remain rigid and motionless. It can last between five minutes and several hours, and can occur once a month to several times in one day.
Edward M. Hallowell, M.D. describes an anxiety attack as an instance
where the amygdala, the neurological regulator of the fight/flight
response in the brain, senses danger or alarm. It sends a signal
to the prefrontal cortex in order to analyze the cause of this
reaction. The prefrontal cortex then signals back to the amygdala,
letting it know that it is processing something. The amygdala
then senses that something is indeed wrong, and this begins a
reverberation reaction. In people who suffer from anxiety disorders,
something runs amok during this neurological exchange. There is
also evidence that some people may be more prone to worry or experience
anxiety than others and that this condition is attached to a specific
gene.(1)
I chose to make art about my experiences with anxiety because
it is the most powerful emotion I have. I think of art as therapy
because it helps me think deeply about my problems and organize
my thoughts, and also because it helps me separate them from the
rest of my mind. Although I use many different approaches to create
art, all of my works have this common thread. With each piece
I try to explore a different facet, cause, or memory of anxiety.
Louise Bourgeois is an artist whose reasons for creating art are
similar to my own. She was born in France in 1911, and received
her first artistic schooling during the Modernist movement. She
moved to New York in 1938 and was exposed to Surrealism during
World War II. She was also influenced by Abstract Expressionism,
Process Art, and Minimalism, but her art cannot be confined to
any of those categories. One of her deepest inner conflicts comes
from memories of her father's mistress Sadie, who was also Louise's
English tutor. Sadie lived with Bourgeois and both of her parents
for ten years. Louise, as a child, was forced to accept this "other
woman" living in her family's house. As a result, she had
three parental figures, which caused an emotional shift in her
relationships with her biological parents.(2) As an artist, she
personifies her guilt and anxiety as a "demon", and
then says she exorcises that demon through the process of making
art. To her, the act of creating art is so physically demanding
that she can rid herself of "demons" in the process.(3)
Louise Bourgeois created a series of installations called "cells".
In most cases they are enclosed areas filled with different things,
both found objects and sculpted objects. Bourgeois's intent is
to recreate the feeling of anxiety she felt within a closed space,
particularly her childhood home.(4) That was where she experienced
a great deal of anxiety, and she has a lot of guilt attached to
memories from there. My installation is different. It is not from
a memory. It is from a space I currently inhabit. It is also not
meant to evoke anxiety. It is meant to evoke comfort. This is
an artistic approximation of my bed. This is where I go to escape
anxiety, or to lay my worries to rest. I constructed it as an
enclosed space because its physical presence is so secure that
I actually feel protected from worry and anxiety.
Edvard Munch is another artist whose motivation was anxiety. He
is most famous for his painting, "The Scream", which
is perhaps the most widely known expression of anxiety in art.
He was born in 1863 in Norway, and began studying art in 1881
with the Norwegian Naturalist painters. In 1889 he moved to Paris
and began painting about the themes of love and death.(5) Munch's
life was marked by an extreme phobia of open places and heights.(6)
His main mode of painting is to observe nature and distort it
so it visually represents his psychological state. Munch was more
afraid of introspection than he was of any outside source. "The
Scream" was Munch's attempt to recreate the memory of a sunset
that had caused him great anxiety. Sunsets in general caused Munch
a lot of nervousness, and there are a number of diary entries
that describe his perception of the phenomenon. One example was
published by the artist himself in 1929:
One evening I was walking along a road. On one side lay the city and the fjord down below.
I was tired and sick. I stopped and looked out across the fjord. The
sun set; the clouds turned red like blood.
I felt something like a scream through nature. I thought I heard a
scream.
I painted that picture, painted the clouds as if they were actually blood. The colors screamed.(7)
I feel my work is similar to Munch's because I am also gripped
by a fear of introspection, and I have also had such surreal experiences
of ordinary events during a period of anxiety. Coincidentally,
even before I read anything at all about Munch, I noticed that
I too am most likely to have an anxiety attack, or feel the most
amount of anxiety during an attack that takes place as the sun
is setting, even if I am indoors.
Munch's mode of abstraction was to paint nature in a way that
expresses the anxiety he feels when he encounters it. He does
this by using bright, unnatural, alarming colors and by altering
shapes and lines to create a swirly, surreal feeling. My mode
of abstraction is a little different. I use the approach of abstract
painting when I want to create a certain mood or depict a certain
aspect of anxiety. I choose to paint because the composition is
easier to control. My paintings are subjective and do not recount
certain events or memories. However, they are about feelings I
have about certain memories. I use color to recreate mood, and
I use texture to create the appearance of a sensation that is
related to a physical sensation I experience during anxiety. In
my piece "Shamed by You's", I am painting about guilt
or shame that comes about by inappropriate action. In this case
I am focusing on sexual guilt and shame. I chose the colors black
and red because, in this context, they are very negative. I use
black as a symbol of sin, being "soiled", and perhaps
being burnt. Red is a color that is associated with anger and
embarrassment, which are also elements I wished to include in
this painting. The highly textured surface is about stress, conflict,
and breakage. In a way it relates to the peaks and lows of an
actual anxiety attack. Like Munch, I use colors and shapes to
communicate about certain feelings or sensations, but I try to
paint them as their own entities, rather than painting perceptions
of scenes or objects that these experiences may distort.
I create found-object three-dimensional art to encourage the audience
to participate in a physical manner. They require effort to be
fully viewed and investigated, and are about both anxiety and
comfort. I feel they evoke an inquisitive response in the viewer
in which he or she feels the need to touch, open, or enter, almost
like a compulsion. In my three-dimensional piece, "Put it
Away", I explore the psychological defense mechanism of ignoring
worrisome matters before they turn obsessive and destructive.
Some viewers may have had the experience of being advised to write
down something about which they are worried and put the piece
of paper in a drawer to demonstrate that it is something that
can be "put away" and dealt with at a better time. I
have seen a particular line of craft jars that have different
labels sculpted onto them, one of which reads "Worries".
The hamper I chose to make for my piece is a similar receptacle
I just need a bigger one than everyone else! The other difference
is that I am inviting the viewer to look inside and experience
the contents, which is a likeness of a human heart. I want the
viewer to feel a moment of alarm when they recognize the object.
In many ways, a human heart is something about which we feel perfectly
comfortable, as long as it is inside a body and we can't see it.
(If we could see a human heart without the obstruction of the
human body, it would indeed be cause for alarm because it would
suggest that something was severely wrong with its owner!) this
piece is also about hidden horrors, but the viewer must ascend
a ladder to look down into it. Edvard Munch confessed that he
felt dizziness and anxiety at the slightest height, and Kierkegaard
wrote that, "We can compare anxiety to dizziness. He whose
eyes look down into a yawning abyss becomes dizzy."(8) For
Kierkegaard and Munch, the fear of heights was symbolic for the
fear of introspection.
Close examination of the issues of my art has enabled me to explain
it more clearly and redefine the direction I want it to take.
I have realized that, although I originally wanted to focus on
the emotion of fear, it is too extreme. I do not know if I ever
experienced true fear. Anxiety is something with which I am well
acquainted, and I feel it is more natural for me to create art
under its set of ideas. It is a more subtle and complex emotion
than the primitive instinct of fear. I have also realized that
sometimes three-dimensional art is more appropriate to communicate
my ideas. My investigation into this field has enriched my paintings
as well, because I can now create pieces that are somewhere in
between two and three dimensions. I have also come to better understand
the importance of the viewer's experience, rather than becoming
engrossed in my own experience of creating. This is very important,
since art is a way to communicate. My ideas have expanded to include
more spirituality and global awareness, which makes my art more
personal and accessible at the same time.
1. Edward M. Hallowell, M.D., Worry (New York: Ballantine Publishing
Group, 1997), 59-61
2. Charlotta Kotik, The Locus of Memory, Louise Bourgeois (New
York: Harry N. Abrams, 1994), 17-19
3. Louis Bourgeois: Drawings and Observations (New York: Bullfinch
Press, 1995) 22-23
4. Charlotta Kotik, The Locus of Memory, Louise Bourgeois (New
York: Harry N. Abrams, 1994), 22
5. Reinhold Heiler, Munch: The Scream (New York: The Viking Press,
1972), 28
6. Reinhold Heiler, Munch: The Scream (New York: The Viking Press,
1972), 67
7. Reinhold Heiler, Munch: The Scream (New York: The Viking
Press, 1972), 108-109
8. Reinhold Heiler, Munch: The Scream (New York: The Viking Press,
1972), 67