The Meddling Mind

Raising awareness for any type of health issue is the most important step in making sure people better themselves, with regards to their general health and wellbeing to prevent them from becoming ill. This can be demonstrated with issues such as cancer, obesity and HIV. Therefore, it should be no different when looking at mental health issues.
However, it is still being continued to be placed in a box labelled ‘too difficult.’ In turn creating a stigma against mental health which continues to worsen due to, the lack of awareness and support the subject has. Which, continues to give it a bad reputation. ‘61% of mental health problems go untreated.’ With ‘men significantly less likely to ask for help than women.’ Which, can be further demonstrated as ‘in 2017 75% of suicides were male.’ This is why I have decided to adopt the theme of mental health into my project.
For my A2 project, I have decided to title my work ‘The Meddling Mind.’ In which I am hoping to portray how the mind works with regards to some mental health issues. How somebody can be ecstatic at one minute but feel sad or frustrated the next. It is a constant daily battle inside their mind yet, to the rest of the world the appear ‘normal’ as they are using their exterior as a mask to hide how they truly are feeling.

Which, is how most suffers of mental health carry out their life. They stay silent and do not reach out for help due to, the stigma that has been given to mental health. Throughout this project I am hoping to demonstrate this through exploring different exteriors to describe what is happening internally.
When looking at artists that would inspire me for this project I had two specific criteria’s. Fine art and modern art. This is because I want my work to be full of detail but also to have a more modern ‘twist.’ When researching different artists I was particularly inspired by Ant Carver for the use of his bold bright colors throughout his work and the way he uniquely places the colours onto the face giving it a modern art feel but by keeping the facial element of the picture in detail thus providing, a fine art element.
The abstract marks that Carver places on the face do not have any specific meaning but, to me the viewer they do. When you look at all of Carvers work the lines differ in length, shapes, and angles. More specifically in ‘Glamour’ the lines are mixed in shapes, direction and in colour.
Demonstrated when the lines are almost scribbles I feel this portrays the female in the photo as feeling confused and this is further supported when the lines are diagonal which gives further representation of the female being lost and confused. This can demonstrate how the external is being used to explain how the person is feeling internally. Which, helps link to my theme of the meddling mind.
Within Gabriel Moreno’s work he also creates fine facial details within his work but but also ties in bold colours that can sometimes be seen to represent the mood that the person within the picture is displaying. From both artists I was inspired through the way they use colour. Which is what I hope to carry out throughout my project. The reasoning behind this is so that my project is full of colour to keep the project positive to demonstrate that mental health does not need to be seen as the negative subject that it has been portrayed to be.
Throughout Agnes Cecile’s work I was most inspired by the way that some of the objects that are outside of the body are representing the way in which the person may be feeling or the way in which the outside world can affect a person. This is further represented by the colours used within Cecile’s work. I am going to experiment with this throughout my project through using the theme of mental health.