32.2 x 7" triptych
oil paint on card (waste material from framing)
November 2021
I began creating anthropomorphisms without intending to. After discovering the thrill of material affordances, I was more focussed on material behaviour than figuration, until I realised that out of the pure physicality of an art object, a recognisable form might emerge.
Abstraction of the human form and the interpretation of ambiguous forms, makes up the premise of the Anthropomorphisms series.
Getting older was the first piece I created in this series and it remains the most important breakthrough in this branch of my art making practice. Named for the Billie Eillish song "Getting older" I see figures of three women, going left to right, young to old, a young girl, an elegant woman, and a crone. As in paint, so in life; I had just moved to London and felt that while I had not yet fallen into step with the tempo of the place, I was still going somewhere, getting older.
Rorschach projective testing and interpreting ambiguous forms
It was not until after I had begun to produce Anthropomorphisms that I came across the Rorschach test and projective testing as a practice in Psychology for its standardisation of human perception and experience.
Although it is an outdated practice, I see the Rorschach test as a harbinger of the algorithm.
While I would not encourage an interpretive approach of "coding content" from an Anthropomorphism, or trying to reconcile psychological precedents with a person’s interpretation, from what I have seen of different people's reaction to the series, there are commonalities between some and differences with others and all are significant.
Where a viewer’s attention falls, how they articulate their observations and even their inability to find anything in them, exposes an individual's disposition towards themselves, their confidence in their own perceptions and the way they relate to world around them. This disposition, can be defined in language; literary and computational.
While art is not to be constrained by interpretation, the power of art to expose deep-rooted perceptions and memories in its audience is invaluable to humanity's conscience and future.