Artist Biography
Time Through Truro
I am drawn to outdoor spaces and beautiful lighting. As an artist, I’ve worked closely with the outdoor space and have found an interest in the things that happen to our perception of a place when it is subject to beautiful lighting. During my junior year at Endicott College I painted the series Hometown Luminance, which was a fervent pursuit of the lighting that I found to be in the most beautiful landscapes. Further, it was a personal quest to understand how to paint light objectively. I suppose that the journey that I’ve taken through the 2021 thesis exploration is a continuation of that pursuit, but this time I study the light in order to understand it subjectively.
Depicting the natural world has been an artistic obsession of mine since I first started to work with oil paints. The worldly inspiration that I have found in my adult life was prefaced by an early love for the outdoor space. I’ve fallen deeply in love with what happens in the process of creating an artistic impression of a space; it’s as if through creating a painting, I am able to interact with the space on a deeper cognitive level. It interested me to observe, when I was studying abroad in Italy, that we are capable of fostering relationships with the spaces that we find ourselves in, if we pause long enough to observe what constituents of that space make it special to us. For me, what makes a space special has always been a warm breeze that breathes in the light of golden hour. Birds chirping, seagrass whispering, and the sea far beyond reach but not beyond sight. I suppose it’s my romanticisation of such spaces that make my fingers itch to paint them, as if by doing so I can take the place with me wherever I go. I feel that a part of my soul rests in every place I’ve touched and been touched by, and perhaps that is why I chase those places with my paintbrush long after I’ve left them. This series, Time Through Truro depicts five pieces of the same expanse of landscape, with oil on birchwood panels. I hope that the viewer is able to view these landscapes through the lens with which I have been able to experience the space, but also, I hope that through experiencing my work, the viewer is able to contemplate and understand what about the natural world makes a space feel special to them.
Thesis Abstract
Sacred Spaces in Art Therapy: Exploring Internal and External Worlds Through Landscape Painting
Special spaces in the natural world have often been looked to by great creatives when in need of inspiration, and by great thinkers when in need of knowledge. Similarly, but perhaps more discreetly, it has been looked to by those in need of healing. Humans naturally gravitate towards places that make them feel safe and at peace; this is why when we are at our most vulnerable, our human instinct is to curl up into ourselves, in order to simulate the feeling of being in the ultimate safe space; the womb. But this basic instinct is only just the tip of the iceberg for the power that the spaces we exist in have over us, and this thesis has tried to understand that instinct and how it can be utilized in therapy. Through a literature review, the areas of art therapy, sacred spaces in art, and the cultivation of the therapeutic environment are presented. By physically going into outdoor spaces to sketch, journal and reflect on the healing quality of the outdoor space, the research informed the practice of landscape paintings. In result, five landscape oil paintings on birchwood panels were created through a series titled Time Through Truro. The paintings showed that by interacting with a space by means of artistic inquisition, a person may foster a deeper and more meaningful relationship with that space, which can benefit them in their moments of needing a “happy place”.