[LAUIL601] Developmental Work: Feedback on Retinal Detachment Pieces

 

• Putting work into a different context. The pieces I made were originally about retinal detachment, and using art as therapy to work through the trauma of what I've been through with flashing lights, total blackness and 4 emergency surgeries: and the level of low vision I have left now trying to make sense of the world through floaters and ocular migraines in the upper part of my left eye. The put into a new context, attached with a quote to portray the mood I was feeling that day, the feedback was interesting to gauge.

• Feedback was slow to start with as my audience was growing on the instagram platform. It gets better and more engaging through the slides

• I do realise that critique is informal, encouraging and positive and does not help to develop my practice in any way because of the audience not being made up of any illustration peers. At the same time, these were vulnerable, raw and authentic pieces made through my own self-directed "art as therapy" open studio sessions where I was working through extreme isolation in the pandemic, through the second lockdown November-December, without Tami for months while she had surgery.

• Three different ways of looking at the same piece of work through square viewfinders. What does the audience see through colour and marks and how it is framed through a square on Instagram?

• I experienced avoidance of crit sessions as a trauma and personal issues. avoidance is a huge part of going through trauma and I didn't know why I did this so much until I researched into the topic, especially Dr. Backos' book Art Therapy and PTSD. It was easier for me to upload into the online domain, in my own time, with strangers and friends rather than a class of peers I didn’t know very well and who don’t understand my visual disability.

• What could be better? What could be improved? I definitely fell into a state, and sense, of comfortability and complacency at using the same tools (charcoal and oil pastel in particular) to convey retinal detachment. It was only when I started to use acrylic paints on canvas and a "monoprinting at home" technique with a Gelli plate that my practice started to soft a little bit more. I could have and should have done this much sooner to challenge and inspire myself.