Back in 1995, I did a couple of retreats with Shaun McNiff, who wrote the book Art as Medicine. I don’t remember the instructions, I think the painting process was very improvisational.
From my journal for June 1995:
FRIDAY JUNE 9 at Merriam Hill for ART as MEDICINE with Shaun McNiff. A beautiful day — green and blue day — see every tree on the mountains day. Came out a little in tonight’s painting — it’s that peak moment of June, the leaves fully out but still spring green, everything is fresh, nothing damaged yet, but we are almost to the top of the cycle, the wheel is turning and soon it will turn back down… The painting had flourishing fleshy green plant forms against a peach sky — that combination always makes me think of adolescent romance.
June 11 The lots chose me to work with Shaun yesterday — demonstrating how to dialogue with the images. He said I was absolutely fantastic at it, the best he’d ever seen (which is high praise — considering that he’s done this for years) He also said I was very talented. I doubt that I’ll be able to report the whole exchange, some things went right out of my head almost immediately.
Read a bit of the New Yorker at break — horrified at the tone of voice: superior and deprecatory at the same time: yes we are weary here at the end of the millenium, but will still have a dry sense of humor — I find it totally false and sad, an evasion of reality while pretending to be realist. Someone said after the dialogue exercise how powerful it was to be in the truth — yes, and when we are in the truth there’s no need to be superior and cynical and deprecatory.
Let’s see. Dialogue work. I worked with the Second “Creepy Man” painting and the “Woman with Masks.” To “Creepy Man” I said “You seem very chaotic, ungrounded.” The painting responded “I like my chaos. I am ungrounded because I’m springing off the ground.” I described the blue line as “bone”. Asked to speak for the blue line, I had to grope for words “cold— ancient — Iceland, Greenland — north,” but what I remembered was the hut of the north, built of icycles and bones, that I had drawn in my medicine journey. Shaun said it was like being at a seance with an Icelandic shaman. For the black crescent moon I also had a hard time finding words, said something about “New Moon begins in darkness,” then that the moon was a sickle, a curved knife to cut the umbilical cord. Later, when the others were allowed to respond, Enid sang a beautiful chilling soaring chant to the moon that gave me goose bumps it was so exactly what that moon was about.
When I moved to the other painting I found myself embarrassed and uncomfortable with the fullness of the breasts, but when I spoke for them — no, what happened? Shaun said, holding his hands to his heart, “I’ve got a lot in here,” and that opened the door. I burst into tears saying “O yes, I have so much inside, endless stores of grain, and bolts of cloth and melons, and glass vases —— and I’d like to give it all away, but I’m afraid people won’t like me, will get angry at me, and so I hide what I’ve got.”
I wish I had taken pictures of my works, I don’t remember now what they looked like. Reading this, I didn’t remember what Shaun said of me. I told Erica and she thought it was important so I decided to do this blog post.
I find it interesting that I couldn’t remember more of what Shaun said to me. I think it was “don’t think you’re so great” controlling what I could remember. I’m glad I got as much as I did.