Friday, February 20, 2015

The Creative Process II

The Creative Process II

Even though I was painting circular shapes in abstract paintings and I consciously chose them for the sculpture piece, I did not expect that when I assembled them together they would look like flowers and eventually like a plant or vine. This was a surprise that brought me back to an object: flower, that was very present in many of the choices I made in life. So the shapes that we create in art are multi determined like the visual images in dreams. They originate in our unconscious and make it into  consciousness for special reasons and connections.
When I decided to replace the metallic mesh for fabric as a building material for the next sculpture, after a few trial and errors, I realized that sewing each piece like a stocking and placing armature wire inside it was the way to do the work. After a few moments, sitting at a sewing machine in the studio, it was amazing to be flooded by memories from my childhood when I enjoyed looking at my mother sewing and wished I could do it myself. So my new piece has fabric and sewing, two things that connect me closely to my mother. At no point did I think that I would work at a piece in this way. It was a process of discovery that once again brought me to my childhood and pleasant scenes in it. Playing with fabrics, sewing with thread and needle, were childhood activities free of conflict. Art work is more productive when is autonomous from psychic conflict.
Here is how the fabric sculpture looks  at this point.

Fabric Sculpture

Wednesday, February 18, 2015

The Creative Process

The creative process

I would like to write about the creative process from two different points of view. The first one is from the point of view of an emerging artist that is working on abstract oil paintings and is also making wire sculptures with mesh and fabric. As an artist I am curious about the process that takes place while I am developing work. I want to document the process in pictures, describe it and show how it develops. The second point of view is related to my profession as a psychoanalyst and the contribution of psychoanalysis to the understanding of creativity. Here I can share my impressions, psychological analysis of my art work and intrapsychic observations.



VINE                   wire and mesh sculpture                           2014

This is how this work started. I was taking a class on Sculpture with ordinary materials, I decided to work with wire and mesh. The wire could be shaped and the mesh was helpful to cover it. Here are some pictures of the beginning.




After several units were tied together to an axis, I continue to work adding more pieces  at a vertical position. Soon people started to comment that it looked like flowers or butterflies. Although I did not intent to create these images, I did accept that it looked like a plant and eventually like a vine. Plants and flowers have been in my mind since childhood.

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