The hidden knowledge of my unconscious
An ode to automatic drawing
Project details
- Year
- 2023
- Programme
- bachelor-illustration-rasl-dual-degree
- Practices
- Honours Programme
- Minor
- RASL Minor
This project explores the relations between art, the conscious/unconscious mind, and our bodies through the practice of automatic drawing, focusing on my personal experience with the technique.
Feeling stressed, depressed or inspirationless? Drawing is the key, it will set your mind free!
The lack of movement during COVID-19 led me to a renewed exploration of materials and the art of making. I started to work more with ceramics and textiles, but I also returned to drawing. Without a plan I started to consistently keep notebooks with me and intuitively let out lines onto the paper. This ‘going with the flow’, not worrying about the outcome and focusing on the movement of my hands helped distract me from everything else that was going. It brought me peace and joy during stressful times. I learned to take my time with a medium and focus on the process, allowing myself to enjoy the journey. So, what for me were and are creative outlets, also became therapeutic ones.
Inspired by the works of Swedish artists and medium Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) I started to research automatic drawing, a term that applied to a way of drawing that I had been practicing all along.
Automatic drawing is a form of spontaneous art that allows the hand to create freely without conscious control.
Af Klint and many fellow mid 19th century spiritualist artists, many of whom were women, used automatic drawings as a technique to communicate with spirit guides who would steer their hands over the paper. The images these artists created were among the first abstract works of art. Later, also the surrealists, inspired by the use of automatic drawing within the field of psychoanalysis (Freud and Jung), widely experimented with the technique, but instead they used it more as a way to get access to the unconscious. Lasts I looked into its historical connections with Outsider Art, as one of the purest forms of unconscious creation.
