The inner and the outer

The tree of landscape embedded into the soil of the body

I'm often asked what the relationship is between my visualisation of interoception, my drawings made in response to direct external perception, such as landscapes and portraits and my visualisation of narratives that I have extracted from the stories told to me by people of their life events. They are in fact all very closely related. In the digital print above I have tried to merge all three, which on reflection wasn't the best idea as there are now too many approaches to an idea in the same image; but it does perhaps indicate something about how the three flow between each other. 

Interoception, exteroception and story telling are types of sensory perception and narratives that help us understand the world we exist within. Interoception includes sensing signals from within the body, such as changes in temperature, pain, or fatigue. It also includes the sensations that accompany emotions, like fear, excitement, or surprise and provides feedback about how the body is functioning, by signalling hunger, thirst, or sleepiness. Interoception connects our minds with our bodies. Exteroception is centred on the processing of information that we perceive as coming from the external world, and it is focused on how we use the five senses of sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch to form predictions as to what is happening out there. In order to 'read' these sensations we often give shape to them by cloaking them in narratives. E.g. "I feel really thirsty, there must have been too much salt in that meal." We use stories to make sense of the information coming in to us, both as a filter and as an ethical or world view framework. All of which, the conscious mind receives as qualia, the phenomenal qualities of our experiences. 

The feelings that I try to visualise that sit within the body are invisible but are powerful shapers of how we understand and react to the world. The more I find narratives used to communicate these feelings, the more these narratives could I'm sure be used alongside the narratives that emerge from my own direct external perceptions and be fused with other people's stories. For instance a certain visual quality that I have developed and associated with an interoceptual investigation of anxiety, may at another time be used within an image about migration, so that the anxiety of the storyteller is accounted for. But there is something else, something perhaps even more important, and that is sometimes it's time to tell yourself a new story. So can hope be nurtured within anxiety? Can a belief in a better future be found in the visualisation of pain? 

Detail: textural surface used to visualise a ruined city

I was recently told of dreams of destroyed cities, including a future bombed to rubble Leeds, where both myself and the storyteller live. As I attempted to realise these dreams of cities, the textural surfaces that I developed to visualise the ruins had a particular value that I had previously used to depict inner emotions. The broken buildings were in effect being visualised as if they were broken bodies. Both the non figurative somatic images and narrative sets of figurative images, were in effect reflections of my self awareness of my own consciousness, as I attempted to work with what had been communicated to me. However I didnt want to make images of despair, in order to make them useful I tried to make images of ambiguous possibilities, things of hope. They are most importantly, attempts to materialise thoughts and our bodies are the first indicator of how we do this. We stand tall when feeling confident and fold inwards when anxious, therefore the underlying structures of art forms and key images, also need to reflect this. 

What goes on inside someone's mind is often not what you would expect and the internal narrative that responds to outside interests and appearances, as much shapes those things as is shaped by them. Inner and outer worlds are entwined, the shape of consciousness being found both within the mind and the body, as well as the world itself. A gradual dissolving of the barriers between external 'reality' and inner subjectivity is, I feel, sometimes a very useful thing, as it reminds us of how we swim in a sea of our own subjectivity. 

In psychology this inner and outer reality is communicated in terms of the sub-conscious and the conscious and I'm very aware that that duality still seems to make a lot of sense, therefore an integrated understanding of interoception and exteroception is what I'm trying to work with. 

Detail of an image of ruined buildings

Detail of an image visualising an interoceptual experience 

Just as in the 'real' world, the closer you get to the surface of a drawing, the more you become aware of a jumble of abstract forms. As we approach surfaces with subatomic visualisation techniques, they become even more abstract. The human body is not that dissimilar in topographic form to a torus (donut type form) and you don't think of a donut's hole as being separated from the surrounding space that the donut exists within. We are one contiguous surface, our outside skin, becomes the inside of the mouth or the anus, the donut hole being the tube that connects the two ends. So in effect inside and outside are in reality one. Formally this relates to how electromagnetic fields are then produced by our bodies. Electromagnetic fields are examples of those forces that we cant see and one of these is the weak nonlinear electromagnetic field that surrounds us and is a product of the fact that our cells need to communicate via electro/chemical processes. 

The heart and the brain are well known as organs that generate ion currents. The current from the heart muscle, when measured with electrodes on the skin, can be used to produce an electrocardiogram (ECG); the same current produces a magnetic field that mirrors our torus shaped torso, which when measured, can be used to produce a magnetocardiogram (MCG).

The heart's magnetosphere

In his 1975 paper "Magnetic Fields of the Human Body," David Cohen details the detection and measurement of weak magnetic fields produced by the human body, primarily from the electrical activity of organs like the heart and brain, demonstrating that these magnetic fields are measurable using sensitive instruments like superconducting quantum interference devices or SQUIDS; that is as long as the measurements take place in a heavily shielded environment. Magnetoencephalography (MEG) studies brain activity in relation to its magnetic field and it produces images of the fields explored such as the ones below.

A Magnetocardiogram

As far back as the 18th century, people believed that you could cure illness with magnetism. Dr Franz Mesmer advocated the use of “mesmerised” water and iron filings, to remove obstacles to the body's energy flow. What was at one time conjecture, has now been revisited as part of a growing awareness of the importance of the body's internal communication systems, Our present day awareness of the body and energy flow is however still being informed by the Indian tradition of chakras. The chakra's are often visualised as circular or wheel like forms, (Chakra = Sanskrit, "wheel") and they were first introduced to the West by C. W. Leadbeater, who I have referred to in the past as one of the authors of 'Thought Forms' an important influence on the development of abstraction. Chakras are understood as seven vortices of energy, that are located at various points along the spine. They are both physical and spiritual centres of energy focus and the key issue in relation to wellbeing, is that these energy flows can become blocked and when they are illness is the result. I.e. if the body's internal communication systems are not working properly, we will become physically ill. Here we can see a clear link between the images produced as magnetocardiograms and those produced to visualise chakra energy. In both instances, illness can be read as a problem related to energy being blocked or not flowing properly.

C. W. Leadbeater: Image of a chakra energy flow: 1927

I'm doing some work visualising pain at the moment. The more I talk to people who have had spinal injuries and attempt to visualise their interoceptual feelings of pain, the more I begin to feel that we collectively have an intuitive grasp of these issues. Some of the images that are emerging are not that dissimilar to those produced by Leadbeater, in particular when he was trying to illustrate body auras for his 1902 text, 'Man, visible and invisible'.

He of course had some pretty strange ideas but was a man of his time, with stereotypical views of what he thought of as primitive man and associated ideas such as the differences between 'savage' and 'civilised'. However his visual difference between the 'mental' body aura and the 'astral' body aura is an interesting one, and some of his other visualisations of invisible forces, such as a sudden rush of affection, still feel as if they do touch upon something, even if only as a hesitant guess at a possibility. 

Illustrations of auras from Leadbeater's 'Man, visible and invisible' 1902

The repeated downward sloping curve of the 'Miser' and 'Deep Depression', reminded me of what I had written earlier on Watteau and the inverted hemisphere line. 

The inverted hemisphere line. 

In Leadbeater's auras, as set out in 'Man, visible and invisible', intense anger and the shock of fear are visually translated by the zig-zag. Anger in particular feeling as if it is the zig-zag of the lightening strike that is being called to mind. Several people I have spoken to about how their pain feels have used the image of lightening strikes to get an idea across to me of how intense and sharp a pain might be. No matter how hesitant, I do feel as if there is something worthwhile here to continue exploring. 

Perhaps I'm far too subjective about these things, but as what I'm trying to do is to find some sort of balance between objectivity and subjectivity, it is probably a normal response in a time of the dominance of scientific method, to worry about moving away from objective measurement. But I am after all an artist not a scientist, and as such I want to find things out in my own way, even if it means taking several steps back into time, in order to think about how I can move forward. 

An emotional landscape of traumatic pain

References

Besant and Leadbeater: Thought forms

Cohen, D. (1975) Magnetic fields of the human body. Physics Today, 28(8), pp.34-43.

Kuman, M. (2018) Our Weak Nonlinear Electromagnetic Field that Rules Everything in the Body is Emotionally Sensitive: Journal of Complementary Medicine & Alternative Healthcare October 8(2)

Leadbeater, C.W., (2014) Man, visible and invisible. London: Quest Books.

Leadbeater, C.W. (2013) The chakras. London: Quest Books

See also:

Macro and micro embodied networks

Eye music Includes a reflection on Besant and Leadbeater's 'Thought Forms'

The emotional line

The zig-zag

Qualia

Between art, geometry, emotion and science

Benjamin Brett and geometric psychology 

Freud and drawing invisible forces

The inner body up close

Emotional landscapes

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. 

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

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: 

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

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.

Emotion-Centered Design

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)

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).

See also: 

Collaboration and copying 

Drawing: Analogue and digital processes

Visualising energy flow

Lines as symbols of invisible forces

Stained glass: soldering

Solder now applied

I had to shelve the work on the stained glass for a while. However eventually I managed to return to what was now a very long drawn out project. Soldering was the next skill to master and I was not very confident about how to do it, especially as everything now had to be done in my own studio, as I had used up my entitlement in relation to money paid in for taught sessions. 

I very quickly ran into a problem. The flux I was using and the soldering iron just didn't seem to work. The solder was running off the lead onto the glass and not adhering to the zinc came. So before I began damaging the leading I decided to seek more help. Eventually after another break, (this time due to not being able to do anything physical like manipulate a heavy leaded glass window, as I was recovering from a hernia operation), I was able to get the help I needed. When my soldering iron was tested it was found to be too hot and it had no heat adjustment controls. The flux I was using was also wrong and Jo-Ann of Hannah Stained Glass told me I needed to use tallow. So two tallow candles were ordered and I borrowed a soldering iron from her. 

Tallow candle £5.45 each

Tallow being applied to the joints

The tallow comes in candle form, exactly like a candle, but with no wick. You rub it backwards and forwards across all the joints, making sure the metal surfaces are covered that you want the solder to stick to. 

The soldering iron came with a sponge tray that you use to keep cleaning the soldering iron head between each solder. The purpose of a sponge is to keep the soldering iron tip clean and to wipe off the oxide that can form on it. It's damp partly to keep the sponge from burning, but also to keep the iron from getting too hot; but too much water just sucks the heat out of your tip, which is exactly what you don't want happening when you're about to solder.

This time I was successful in soldering all my leading together, but because this was a new skill, my joints were not very smooth. I shall look to see if I can revisit them and smooth them out, but initially at least the window is held together. 

Solder held in one hand, the soldering iron in the other

Success in joining but too blobby

The small test window has much neater joints

I had done a small test window before and my soldering was much better, or was this just an illusion, as I had applied a black patina to the leading and solder and this does seem to hide imperfections. 

One side soldered

The next step was to turn the window over to solder the other side, which had to be done carefully, so that it didn't fall apart as I lifted it. This was a two person job, so I enlisted Sue's help. 

We put the board down to the floor with the wooden lip at the bottom.

Moving the support board from one side to the other

I held the satined glass frame in place and once the board was vertical was able to lift the window, keeping it vertical, whilst Sue moved the support board around to the other side. I then lowered the window back down and together we lifted the board back onto the trestle ready for the next round of soldering. By keeping the window vertical no undue strains were exerted on it, and we managed to make the move without any mishaps. 

Once cool, I then needed to remove the tallow. 

Removing tallow with a softish ball of wire wool

I didn't want to scratch the surfaces, so I used a ball of wire wool from the kitchen to get the tallow off. The more industrial level wire wool and/or wire brushes are a bit too hard and they would scratch into the soft leading. 

Cleaning with a soft cloth and kitchen surface cleaner

Once the tallow was scratched off, I cleaned the whole surface with a soft cloth and kitchen surface cleaner, which also removed bits of grime that had built up over the time when the window had been in storage. I had to get help to turn the window over again, but soon had all the metalwork clean. There were also some remnants of sharpie markings left on a few sections and I took time to remove these too, using some rubbing alcohol and a cloth. I was now ready for the putty and whiting stage. 

See also:

Stained glass session one

Stained glass session two

Stained glass session three

Stained glass session four

Stained glass session five

Stained glass session six

Stained glass session seven

Stained glass session eight

Stained glass session nine

Stained glass session ten

Stained glass the leading sessions

Drawing on transparent drafting film

New wine in old bottles

Drawing conversations

In conversation: Attempts to visualise bunion pain

There is a cooperative principle developed by Paul Grice that is used within the social sciences to describe how people use conversation to communicate. It describes how in conversations we need to mutually accept one another's world views in order to be understood. Grice was though also very aware of what he called 'conversational implicatures', things that someone can work out from the way something is said rather than what is said. Something that I will also need to take on board. For instance in the visual conversation above, the way the marks are made powerfully effects the way we read each image. 

Paul Grice developed four maxims or rules of conversation: quantity, quality, relation, and manner; as ways to describe how conversation works. 

The drawing and image making sessions I have been holding and intend to continue holding, are all based around the notion of holding conversations around the making of either drawings or objects, that are designed to communicate interoceptual or somatic feelings. Therefore I thought it important to look at how conversations work, so that at the beginning of a workshop I can help facilitate what might evolve as best practice. 

Looking at Grice's four maxims one at a time helps to clarify the communication process:

• Maxim of quantity (informativity) Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current purposes of the exchange).

Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.
I need to ensure that everyone involved in the communication process is adding in information. However too much information will in effect turn people off. Something I need to remember when introducing the reasons why we are doing this. Perhaps more emphasis on what to do and to keep the why until later.

• Maxim of quality (truth) Do not say what you believe is false.

Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.
This is particularly important because I am working with conjecture. How can we visualise feeling? I will need to include only information that I believe is true and that can be backed up with evidence; when I include information that I'm unsure about, I need to provide an appropriate disclaimer regarding my uncertainty.

• Maxim of relation (relevance)

The information provided should be relevant to the current exchange and omit any irrelevant information.
This is a difficult issue, as we will have to decide what is relevant. Questions about what different kinds and focuses of relevance there may be, and how these might shift in the course of a conversation, will need to be asked.

• Maxim of manner (clarity)

The maxim of manner is concerned with how something is communicated.
It is suggested that you need to avoid obscurity of expression, however some visual languages are difficult to understand. This highlights a difficulty and a challenge. Can we develop any form of clarity when dealing with visual communication? It is also suggested that it is best to avoid ambiguity and I'm very aware that art objects can be interpreted in multiple ways. Grice also reminds us to be as brief as possible and to be orderly, so that information is presented in a way that makes sense and enables easy processing.

Poets have often tried to communicate interoceptual experiences and perhaps part of the conversational tone therefore needs to be poetic. Wordsworth was pretty straightforward when telling us his heart leaped at the sight of a rainbow, so perhaps some degree of direct communication can still be achieved, even when wearing a poetic hat.

My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began,
So is it now I am a man,
So be it when I shall grow old

Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.

It works for me too and my heart still leaps when I see a rainbow, proof that my inner feelings are activated by an external visual stimulus. 

Heartleap

See also:

Drawing and communication theory

Blueprints of thought

Visualising energy flow