From the Centre.
In the past, most of my work involved using a central image. The composition was generally based on something in the middle of the canvas or paper. It wasn’t something I planned or deliberately set out to “specialise in”, but it felt important, natural, intrinsic. It allowed me to feel “safe” in pursuing my art practice.
When I was working on my doctoral thesis, I found some research on the psychology of this compositional approach.
The research looked at two artists whose work reflected a deep psychological wounding from childhood. In the interviews, they expressed a deep fear of anything in their paintings being “truncated” by the edge of the picture plane. The study explored their childhood and their motivations in their art practice. They had had very intrusive and impinging mothers and felt an unconscious desire to have the “whole object” in the picture.
The “engulfing mother” is a potent archetype across cultures and we all have an unconscious fear of losing our selves in relationship. Of course, we also have an equal fear of abandonment and loneliness. When our early environment fails us, we never learn to balance these fears or to manage our own competing needs for closeness and intimacy with our need for autonomy.
The central image composition resonates deeply, reflecting an internal drive for separation, control, balance and above all, safety. The paintings produced by the artists in the study symbolised a desire for control or stability in the face of the complex, chaotic and “boundaryless” environment they endured as infants/young children.
For me, the central image composition became, a way of maintaining control over space, avoiding anything that felt cut off or incomplete. In some ways it could be seen as a coping mechanism to manage or contain overwhelming external influences. For the artists in the study it represented a desire for wholeness and safety, a guarding of boundaries.
In looking at my own use of this compositional style, I recognise that I was also driven by a need for wholeness and integrity. I was obsessed with the desire for space, my own space, free of outside influence or impingement. I sometimes feel that this was due more to a lack of a stable sense of self, an ongoing (unmet) need for grounding, centring and stability. This painful reality and the need to find myself was reflected again and again in the work I pursued.
Although this compositional strategy (if it actually is a strategy) is no longer primary in my practice, I have come back to it again, often revisiting it through my watercolour work. The centralised image no longer dominates my practice, but it still has resonance.
