cians and my friends very carefully. They have a powerful impact on the way we feel about ourselves--rousing courage and hope, or fear and depression.
There are a wide range of physical symptoms that may come and go over time with MS. The disease causes damage within the central nervous system along nerve pathways affecting movement, speech, vision, hearing, and bladder & bowel control. What is not commonly recognized is that the disease can also directly interfere with a person’s ability to think clearly. Damage within the brain can create changes that affect problem-solving, attention, learning and memory. I believe that just as physical therapy can help people with MS maintain as much physical ability as possible, mental therapies that encourage problem-solving, attention, learning and memory skills can help people with MS maintain as much cognitive ability as possible. Strategies such as art therapy and other positive challenging creative outlets may help improve or maintain partially impaired cognitive pathways within the brain, and may enhance an individual’s self-worth and natural coping skills against depression and perhaps fatigue.
that scientists must ponder questions from opposing points of view so that eventually we find the correct answers to difficult problems. Below, the inverted image reveals itself to me as a solar eclipse and so I named the painting “Moon.”
Moon (original painting and digital image)
“On the day of the new moon, in the month of Hiyar, the Sun was put to shame, and went down in the daytime, with the Venus star in attendance.”
- Record of an eclipse on Sun 3 May 1375 B.C. discovered in Mesopotamia.
Viewed together the original painting and sister image can be seen as equivalent or contradictory, an analogy to the arts and sciences--and a metaphor that conscious and unconscious elements within us affect health simultaneously in both positive and negative directions.
You may have noticed that I only work on square canvases. This is because while I am painting I do not consider the final orientation of the work. I paint freely and often turn and spin the canvas in different directions and then again when I am interpreting the final abstraction. Only after I have given the painting (and digital art) a name do they receive their final correct orientation. I call the process “Wakeful Dreaming” because much like the early Freudian and Jungian psychologists who first attempted to understand their patients’ dreams using various techniques, I attempt to understand my paintings (and digital art) by giving them each a specific name which usually comes to me upon reading a famous (or not so famous) quotation, or idea. In this way the process of freely creating abstract imagery that I reflect on and finally name embodies an ongoing conversation that I have with myself. In practice, a dialogue between my unconscious, dreamlike, symbolic mind (characterized by my artwork) and my conscious, rational, literate mind (characterized by the quotations I choose). Together, the quotations and artwork speak to me as both a critic and a friend.
The last step to my creative process is to break my artwork symbolically. I do this by combining the original painting and sister image. I was diagnosed with MS the week before finishing my Ph.D. in neuroscience. I remember how I felt that week--shock, a sense of disbelief, as though a brick had just shattered my newly completed stained-glass window. Unlike the original paintings and sister images, my broken art stood alone without words when first exhibited. Since that time, however, something internal has pushed me to add a few words, a final thought. What would my Broken Art say if it could speak? If I could just continue the two thoughts expressed within each painting and sister image, what final thought might appear? continued on pg. 36
Memory
(derived from painting and sister image)
My paintings are abstractions. I do not intend to paint representational images. From time to time they may appear to be something recognizable, and then I may give them the obvious or not so obvious name, but I never intend to paint anything representational. All the same, because I do name my paintings (other artists often leave their abstract art untitled), I do believe that I eventually come to recognize after some reflection what my paintings represent. The entire process of creating and then naming my paintings provides me with a very satisfying physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual release. What’s more, because I approach my artwork with no expectations of good or bad, right or wrong, correct or incorrect, much as a young child first approaches art, I experience very little of the stress and anxiety that is often associated with the creative process. What will people think of my creative work? A question that once caused me anxiety (example my Ph.D defense), has become much less important in view of my illness. I create artwork for my own enjoyment now, and to my own personal satisfaction.
Why do I invert the color of my paintings in my digital art? Well, the inverted color spectrum is beautiful, revealing in that it uncovers hidden elements within the paintings, and also emotionally soothing especially when placed along side the original sister image. The inverted colors also serve to remind me symbolically