[LAUIL601] Artist Research - Merlin Evans: Drawn to Medicine

https://www.drawntomedicine.com 

"I have spent a number of years exploring visualising states of mental health, not only as form of personal reflective practice, but also through a number of activist roles within health organisations. Partner organisations, associations and clients: Mind, Age Uk, Breathe, Psychologies Magazine, Association of Medical Illustrators, Medical Artists' Education Trust, Royal Free Hospital, Stafford County Hospital, Mile End Hospital, University College Hospital, Harley Street Children's Hospital, St George's Hospital, Kings College London."

Merlin recently did a visiting lecture about her work as a professional, but what most interested me was the work she makes around mental health. As well as documenting some of that through notes, and reaching out to her in an e-mail, I want to unpick some of her illustrative works through artist research.

Summer Holidays

• Summer Holidays is a loose illustration with deliberate stippled dot mark-making. It has a childlike and naive tone of voice through the use of shapeless, abstract forms. The changes in line quality suggest speed, liveliness, and swift gestures. The lines are asymmetrically placed on the lower part of the "canvas". A figure can just be made out through the disconnected shape of an eyebrow and eye, resting on a pillow in bed. The disconnect from the yellow to the white draws the eye down to find that pillow and face as that is the only part of the canvas not immediately filled with dense dots. Dot-work suggests motion, with an emphasis and direction beating down on the figure in a heavy weight. Summer holidays are spent in bed while the sun is shining in from the window. The world keeps on moving, people have fun outside, but we are trapped in the prison of our bed and our mind.

• Figure 1 depicts the loose illustration of the shape of a woman. The main focus and emphasis of the illustration, where the eye immediately draws, lies on the female figure as she is the primary source of colour blocked out in rough, dark strokes, The eyes move to her ties and bonds which are at a higher value of red. Her curved forms sag downwards suggesting weight of those mentioned expectations where her hands are tied. Colours are dark and sombre, muddy and dark in value. Textures are painterly and drab. Proportionately her feet are small and she, as a figure, is asymmetrical and uncomfortable to look at. She is leaning more towards the right-hand side of the canvas suggesting a motion of going "off." Off the rails, unable to cope, collapsing under the pressure. 

• Figure 2 is very abstract. No recognisable forms are present and the illustration is filled completely with dots, where some are highlighted in a warm tone. Specially it is disjointed and, as someone with retinal detachment, reminds me of floaters in my eye. My immediate interpretation is that that warm dots are days that were good or surrounded with family, friends or love, and the rest of the dots tells a narrative of days that were lonely, bad mental health days. Like a visual visual diary dispersed in a visual language across a page in time and motion.