Description
 

This work began with a small, freeform drawing on canvas (20cm x30cm),  (Fig. 1), which evolved into a painting (Fig. 2). I then mounted the painting onto a wood panel (Fig. 3) effectively extending the picture plane, a method I had previously employed in the works, The Blackening and Beyond the Blackening. Black-painted wood batons were layered onto the surface to expand the labyrinthine image in the painting (Fig. 4), blurring the line between image and structure. Lying the work on the floor created a sense of a descending vortex. This downward motion suggested a return to an origin point. I built a custom plinth to display the piece, eventually extending the structure upwards to form a cot, with the extended painting as its base.

The image of the cot relates to my ongoing trauma therapy (EMDR). In EMDR sessions, I am required to repeatedly revisit my earliest memory of a specific moment as an infant in my cot as the starting point of each session. This memory initiates the processing of trauma, which is a painful and challenging process where I relive numerous traumatic experiences.  My EMDR experiences parallel my practice that explores processing trauma through the creative process, focusing on Jungian alchemical individuation.  The unsettling contrast between the cot as a symbol of infancy and origin, and the blackened, burnt aesthetic of nigredo, represents dissolution, psychic fragmentation, and confrontation with the archetypal shadow.

The Cot structure symbolises the beginning of individuation and represents the prima materia as the starting point of the alchemical transformation process. The assemblage, when completed, was charred with a blowtorch to transform the work further and extend the concept of nigredo. The result is a cot that appears scorched or destroyed, evoking the death of innocence, personal loss, and grief. The work carries layered meanings. It symbolises a return to the origin, a symbolic container for trauma, and a site of transformation.

References

Jung, C.G. and Jung, C.G. (1977) Mysterium coniunctionis: an inquiry into the separation and synthesis of psychic opposites in alchemy. 2d ed. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press (The collected works of C.G. Jung, v. 14).