Week 12: The Art Process as catalyst for Transformation and meaning-making – an exploration into the therapeutic value of: Pigment processing, Clay-work, Mindful Drawing, Encaustic methods, Collagraph printing and Paper-making (POST STILL IN PROGRESS)
“The body is the shore on the ocean of being.” Sufi saying “Trauma is not just what happens to us but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness.” Peter A. Levine Ph.D I felt the need to make a post about this topic in order to take the research I have […]
Week 10: LIVE JOURNAL ENTRY: THE INVISIBLE SOIL CRISIS (incomplete, work in progress)
As my practice seeks to repair and maintain lost connection that we have neglected over the past 400 years as a society, one of the lost connection I advocate for is CORE VALUES. I value my environment and seeing that ‘care’ includes repairing and maintaining our world. As Joan Tronto states: ‘That world includes our […]
Depression & Anxiety: an current statistical overview and and the role of phenomonology in mental health diagnosis
“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” Juddi Krishnamurti Depression and anxiety and its link to various lost connections: From my contextual study: The 21st century has witnessed a significant rise in mental health issues worldwide.According to the World Health Organisation (WHO, 2017) depression ranks as thesingle […]
Week 7: ENCAUSTIC MEDIUM & Week 13: Where is the art, where is the audience (lower down)
The word Encaustic, dates from the late 16th century: via Latin from Greek enkaustikos, from enkaiein ‘burn in’, from en- ‘in’ + kaiein ‘to burn’. Encaustic painting was practiced by Greek painters as far back as the 5th-century. Most of our knowledge about the origin of the hot wax painting comes from the writings by the Roman scholar Pliny the Elder, who in […]
WEEK 6: LIVE JOURNAL ENTRY – THE SAN: Indiginous tribes of South Africa
A 100 000 year old ‘paint workshop’ found in Blombos cave, Stilbay, South Africa in 2008 Indigenous San tribes of South Africa: The amplification of indigenous voices in history is crucial to rectifying the destructive past and to learn from a more ancient wisdom with which they lived with and from the land. During the […]
WEEK 6: LIVE JOURNAL ENTRY – ALCHEMY
The purpose of the following live journal entry is to express my interest in the subject of how alchemical transformation was related to the transformation of the human psyche according to Jung and to make notes about new isights – things I agree with or don’t agree with. I became interested in the term Alchemy […]
WEEK 5: LIVE JOURNAL ENTRY – POLYVAGAL THEORY, NEUROCEPTION and INTEROCEPTION.
The first time I heard of the vagus nerve was when I came across an image of it. It caught my eye because it looked like a root system and at first that is what I thought it was only to discover that it was an anatomical illustration of the vagus nerve. On another occasion […]
Week 5: Live journal entry – JONKERSHOEK PEAKS & VALLEYS
In preparation for a body of work for this unit, I plan to summit each peak and decent down every valley in the Jonkershoek mountain range situated near my home. I managed to get topographic and ortho maps of these mountains which will help me to plan and serve as inspiration as I plan each […]
Week 5: Live journal entry – FOR THE ‘LOVE’ OF MOTHS
I use to be afraid of moths. Especially as a child. Their hairy bodies, the fact that they can fly into you unpredictably and tend to appear at night when as a child I was also afraid of the dark. They also tend to stick to you or sit when they’ve flown into you. I […]
Week 5: Live journal entry – ANCHORED: RHIZOME AND THE MIND
The concept of the rhizome as a metaphor for the mind refers to the interconnected and non-hierarchical nature of thought processes. Just as a rhizome plant grows horizontally underground, sending out roots and shoots in multiple directions without a central point of control, the mind is seen as a network of interconnected ideas and thoughts […]
Week 5: Live journal entry – CENTERING
Centering clay on a potters wheel as a metaphor for the soul: The words freedom, peace, single focussed and serenity come to mind when I look at centering metaphorically. Freedom to play: safety in the absence of fear, and free from our own internal limitations and external tyrannies. In order to play, we must be […]