Using art as a way of representing your mental state
- Gvidas Lipinas
- Dec 14, 2016
- 3 min read
As I stated on my wiki page I enjoy using art, especially photography as a form of escaping from reality as it lets me show others how I see the world we live in and at times its not what they expect to see.
“Surrealism is destructive, but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision” ~Salvador Ali~
Surrealism and fear factor play a mayor part in a lot of my work and I think this is due to the state of my mind, its self destructive and it can be seen a lot in my work. Take for example the image I created above at roughly 3 am in the morning; its a dark, surreal image which might not mean a lot to others but when I look at it I see myself trapped in my own room slowly degrading away, not knowing what to do or where to get help as I’m blinded by the mist which are my thoughts. When thinking of mental illness just imagine a constant mist blinding your way to happiness, you keep on trying to find your way through it but you’re running around in a constant circle not finding your way out until you simply give up and let it devour you.
I see art as a form of expression for me as I wouldn’t be to describe how I feel to someone who hasn’t been through the same pain as someone with mental disorders but when put into a still image its becomes a lot more clear to them how one feels about himself and their surroundings. Another thing that I found out with still images and soon after moving images is that you can capture your fears the way you see them and other will be able to relate to them.
What I mean by that, take my above image as an example. After exploring fear factor deeper and looking into Salvador Dali and similar artist I realised that I don’t have to copy other artist work or spend hours questioning people what their fears are to come up with something original, all I had to do was ask myself “What are you scared of?“. I soon realised that darkness, the unknown and isolation were the answers for my final image and they were deeply hidden within my subconsciousness.
As I stated before I use different forms of media to express how I feel and let people see into my constant mist. However, media isn’t all fun and games as in the time we live in greater number of teenagers and young adults of both genders are being diagnosed with mental illnesses, its great that both genders, especially males are brave enough to come up and talk about their problems as it shows how much we as a society and species have matured considering mental illness isn’t something we look down upon now. But I believe media we see daily is largely to blame for why people self esteem is crippled.
Just think about it, everything is about being noticed online as we live in a digital age. Likes on Instagram, Facebook, followers on Twitter; all of these can affect an individuals social status in the ‘real’ world we live in when a few pixels shouldn’t dictate the way others see us. Adverts also play a major part in our lives, we’re constantly force fed this big label models who force themselves to be anorexic just to be seen to have a ‘perfect’ figure and if someone like that is a role model to you of course you will try to follow their life style choices and if you don’t look like them you will start questioning what is wrong with you.
Everyone should be able to look how they want to, live the lives they want to without being constantly being judged or being worried that the person across the street is starring them down and judging them.
Happiness all around is needed.