Drawing "Experience"
Cardiff School of Art and Design
Second year project
Brief: To use drawing to explore the sensory experience of the world around us.
With such a broad brief, I drew on past experiences and personal relationships to explore how certain sensory experiences can help ease loneliness. In particular, I wanted to look at the sometimes isolating nature of disability, and how the UK is institutionally failing at addressing this need. I wanted to explore how art could be used to tackle this feeling.
Gestalt psychology looks at how our past experiences affect our perception. When thinking of loneliness in this light, I’m reminded on the often returned to phrase of “alone in a room full of people”. Crowded places can often be the loneliest places; even if it is a room full of friends and loved ones, it can be a moment when we feel most exposed. Social situations call for a complex navigation of social cues - they can be a memory game, sidestepping people's intentions and feelings. They can be exhausting for some, and those who have a learning disability, they can feel impossible.
According to Scope, a UK based charity that aims to advocate for equality for disabled people, the social model of disability orients the role of disability on society rather than the individual.
“The model says that people are disabled by barriers in society, not by their impairment or difference.”
This model highlights how often the most isolating part of a disability can be the barriers provided by society rather than the disability itself. Disability requires adjustment - for the whole, not just the individual. Nonetheless, the individual often bears the brunt of the burden, and this as a result isolates them, compounding feelings of loneliness. This is an institutional failing, and not something that can be solved quickly. This project doesn't aim to solve problems, but to consider how people can take simple comfort from art, and specifically from pets.
Thumbnail sketches, exploring landscape
