A recent lecture introduced me to the writing of psychiatrist and writer Iain Mc Gilchrist. His direct clinical experience underpins his idea that perception doesn’t just receive information from the outside world like a helpless consumer. In fact, it’s a dynamic process in itself- one that directly affects our direct experience of things. It’s a process we can have agency in so I’m learning.
I’ve found this fresh understanding of what McGilchrist labels modes of attention, (the categorising approach compared to encountering approach) – to have really shifted and crystallised the way I understand drawing and making in my practice recently. It’s not just about looking, the quality of looking is equally as important. Rather than rushing which drawing, I actively try to attend to my practice in a more responsive manner. Paying attention to the physical sensation of making – pressure, touch, resonance, the feeling the activity gives me in my body.
I’m starting to understand that if we take ownership of our own personal way of seeing, we have ethical choices to make. For example, describing a surface is not as I first thought, a pretty neutral, unbiased task that is just as simple as describing what you see. Actually, it’s the decisions about how we see that need to come first. This is because these decisions impact the very experience of looking.
This resonates with John Ruskin’s emphasis on observation as being something that is profound ,especially if it’s expressed in a clear manner. I think that point is really important. In my practice I aim to distill complex threads of concepts, processes down to their essence. I use reflective writing, voice notes and the very act of contemplative making as way in which and also crucially this process actively shapes its direction. This means that many small decisions add up to several big decisions. Active research means I need to stay awake and aware to even the way I approach this act of looking.
At this stage of Unit 1 I’m identifying attention as a conceptual framework and as an embodied, active method of looking. The idea underpins the conceptual structures and working processes.