A somatic inner landscape
My research into interoception has led me towards the constructing of what I think of as emotional landscapes. Our thoughts and emotions are held in our bodies, shaped by neurological pathways formed in our brains. Therefore we can think of the body like a landscape or eco-system that has been shaped over the duration of our lives by the rivers, winds, evolutionary forces and seismic shifts of thought and emotion. The problem for myself and many of us is that once the neurological landscape and its eco-systems are formed, rivers flow down now pre-existent valleys, and living creatures within our bodies (we are over 50% bacteria) have evolved in particular ways in order to fit the niches they evolved within and they too are directing our thoughts in channels that may be decades old. Therefore new experiences are usually channelled into old pathways. We are in effect being shaped by our past, re-living it in the present, again and again.
So as an artist making images that are attempts to communicate certain interoceptual experiences, who is also undergoing therapy, I have been reflecting on this and thinking about how these visual reflections might be able to help myself and others to develop a more nuanced and in-the-present somatic self-awareness? Self-awareness perhaps being one way to go back to our inner landscape and begin to cut into it a few new channels, pathways that might help us get past old traumas or not useful habits. As someone who is passionate about the continuing relevance of the long history of drawing, I have been trying to develop an approach to this by going back and looking at art history and thinking about how the idea of a landscape can be both an inner, as well as an external experience. This also reflects a growing awareness that our pasts are also the structures on which we build ourselves, and any new activity will have to be carried by the building blocks of our past. As in most things what is looked for is a synthesis, finding a way to keep the mind and body open to new experiences, whilst keeping both in good repair.
Half way in time between the construction of Guo Xi's 'emotional landscape' and now, Albrecht Altdorfer produced his image of 'Saint George in the Forest'. Brad Morosan, had this to say when discussing the painting, "Altdorfer depicts a natural world in which the seen is the garment of the unseen." (Morosan, 2010) That 'unseen' being I would argue, is the inner somatic emotional feeling tone we have when thinking about these ideas. St George is in effect immersed in the belly of an image that is both a dark forest and an internalised psychic landscape.
At the same time I am working towards a much more ambitious project whereby I'm developing an animation of an 'emotive landscape', a project I have mentioned already. See: The scrolling of Chinese landscape imagery has in particular influenced my decision to slowly scroll through a landscape/body, which is in itself an idea influenced by the Chinese concept of the Neijing tu. See:
Sometimes ideas take a long time to jell. When I read Thomas Hardy's novels, back in the 1960s I realised then that landscape was more than just a setting, it was an active participant and a deep emotional metaphor. In Tess of the d'Urbervilles, it is a cypher for Tess's internal metal state, for instance when she comes home after losing her virginity, she sees the landscape as a reflection of her distress. She begins to understand the external world as having an emotional voice and as she does so, she internalises it; as Hardy put it, “The midnight airs and gusts, moaning amongst the tightly-wrapped buds and bark of the winter twigs, were formulae of bitter reproach”. (2005, p.108) I read the novel as a schoolboy. but it has taken until now to understand how I could use it's ideas in my artwork. The personification of midnight airs and gusts, could I realised go both ways, and my internal winds, could be seen as blowing through and out of a body landscape that sits in a world that I see more and more as belonging to a continuing ancient animist tradition.
NB
In the world of the designer, emotional landscapes are defined in a different way and there exist tools to help in their visual construction. They are defined as visual representations of the emotions people experience in relation to a product or service. They operate as maps that illustrate the intensity and makeup of those feelings. For instance the X-axis can be used to represent intensity, and the Y-axis to represent desirability. The image below is taken from an emotion centred design website; Medium.
In her insightful book, 'The Story of Drawing: An Alternative History', Susan Owens introduces us to the work of Guo Xi. When describing the affect of his brush drawing, 'Old Trees: Level Distance', created nearly a thousand years ago in 1080, she states, "It is a drawing that describes an inner state of mind - wistful and nostalgic - every bit as much as the external world." (Owens, 2024)
Guo Xi: Old Trees: Level Distance
Albrecht Altdorfer: Saint George in the Forest: 1510
Half way in time between the construction of Guo Xi's 'emotional landscape' and now, Albrecht Altdorfer produced his image of 'Saint George in the Forest'. Brad Morosan, had this to say when discussing the painting, "Altdorfer depicts a natural world in which the seen is the garment of the unseen." (Morosan, 2010) That 'unseen' being I would argue, is the inner somatic emotional feeling tone we have when thinking about these ideas. St George is in effect immersed in the belly of an image that is both a dark forest and an internalised psychic landscape.
I am though an artist of the 21st century and I have a wider range of drawing tools available to me, including CAD and animation equipment. So I have begun to develop not just single images of feelings made in response to conversations with people, but also animated landscapes within which I can place 'feelings', landscapes designed like those of Guo Xi and Albrecht Altdorfer, as containers of 'inner states of mind'. People I have been talking to recently have told me about their anxieties about the state of the world. In particular, more than one person has been having dreams and nightmares about a city in ruins following a nuclear war, one where Leeds or wherever they see as home, is reduced to rubble and its people totally extinguished. A combination of seeing news footage on a daily basis from Gaza, the drip, drip, drip of Putin's propaganda and the rise of Trump, has gradually eroded traumatic pathways into some people's brains. I have attempted to visualise these thoughts by first of all making drawings and then from the drawings making prints. I see these prints as 'worlds in which the seen is the garment of the unseen'; Morosan's phrase seemed totally right, the distressed marks made by inks and sticks and brushes, further heightened as part of the printmaking process, by imitating the use of the old litho film I used to use when making screen prints. This film was used to turn an image into areas of black and white only, there were absolutely no mid tones. To soften the transitions you could apply a dot screen, but I like to use this type of method to roughen up the image and to make tonal decisions much more dramatic, a sort of printmaker's chiaroscuro. The nearest contemporary application in Photoshop is the stamp filter, which works in a similar way, as you can only have black or white areas, thin ink washes are broken up into black/white textural surfaces, that are suggestive of a dark drama. Grainy watercolour washes can be transformed into more aggressive textural surfaces.
A typical drawing I have done in response to someone's dream
From a series of prints based on dream conversations: 2024
Detail of an inner emotional landscape scroll
The images embedded into the landscape/body were developed in response to a series of conversations out of which a book of drawn images were developed that were then used as visual prompts within workshops, designed to help people begin the process of thinking about how to visualise inner feelings. That book has now been scanned and digitally archived: See
Detail of an animation that uses a landscape scroll as a slowly moving background
In the world of the designer, emotional landscapes are defined in a different way and there exist tools to help in their visual construction. They are defined as visual representations of the emotions people experience in relation to a product or service. They operate as maps that illustrate the intensity and makeup of those feelings. For instance the X-axis can be used to represent intensity, and the Y-axis to represent desirability. The image below is taken from an emotion centred design website; Medium.
Find a 'look book' for emotion centred design here.
The commercial world uses emotional design to get people to engage with products and services and as a former head of theoretical studies at the Art College, I used to have to introduce 'emotional design' in my lecture programme. It can be used in many ways, not just to sell goods to people who might not really need them.
References
Foster, J.A. and Neufeld, K.A.M., (2013) Gut–brain axis: how the microbiome influences anxiety and depression. Trends in neurosciences, 36(5), pp.305-312.
Hardy, T. (2005) Tess of the D’Urbervilles Oxford: Oxford University Press
Morosan, B (2010) 3 Divine Landscapes: The Style of Albrecht Altdorfer University of Western Ontario https://www.uwo.ca/visarts/research/2010-11/bat/images/Web/3,%20Morosan,%203-24.htm (Accessed 11. 12. 24)
Morosan, B (2010) 3 Divine Landscapes: The Style of Albrecht Altdorfer University of Western Ontario https://www.uwo.ca/visarts/research/2010-11/bat/images/Web/3,%20Morosan,%203-24.htm (Accessed 11. 12. 24)
Owens, S (2024) The Story of Drawing: An Alternative History of Art: London: Yale University Press
Xue, H., (2022) The Picturesque and the Tragic Vision: Thomas Hardy’s Landscape and Female Images in Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Frontiers in Art Research, 4(3).
Xue, H., (2022) The Picturesque and the Tragic Vision: Thomas Hardy’s Landscape and Female Images in Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Frontiers in Art Research, 4(3).
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