Paintings and Drawings: Representations of Emotions

 

These pieces of work were produced as a follow up to the photographs on mental health as shown below:

 

I began to explore how illness can make you feel and how I could represent this visually. I explored this concept with words and colours which I feel represent how I feel. The feedback from my tutors wasn't overwhelmingly positive but, I feel, that these images are very evocative. If you look at the issues within mental health and being mentally unwell, the words in the first image certainly are what many would feel. The need to keep going, to not stop, questioning your own abilities/ self worth, and so on. The next images use colours to represent this, with red= anger/ frustration, blue= conflict, yellow= hope, white= purity/ goodness/ positive, black= depression/ negative, and so on. I also incorporated PVA glue into the images to explore how peeling the glue and any paint applied over them could symbolic layers and looking deeper into the feelings and issues surrounding a person. Another idea I experimented with was dripping candle wax over the canvas to symbolise tears, and the fact they are the same colour as the surrounding paint allows them to be disguised, thefore, representing hidden tears.

My conclusion from this work is there was more to them than the tutors realised and maybe this was not clear in my presentation/ supportive work. The images are in the order they were presented in.

Please click the thumbnails to view a larger image:

 

All pictures © Laura Elliott (Elliott's Web UK).

This material may not be used without prior permission from the owner.