Lovesick:

The Psychological Animal JenMarie Zeleznak November 2011

My work is concerned with social and emotionally driven experiences affected by uncertainty, desire and illusion. I surrender to that emotional space, portraying and projecting myself onto the animal as a means to explore the damaged psyche. I attempt to give that intangible force of the psyche, a voice through a subject that is essentially unable to speak for itself. The animal is rendered in isolation, so as to focus inward on absence of connections and unfulfilled desires. An essential ambiguity in the representation of the animal is created in the work by blending desire and absence, tenderness and tragedy, through a mere suggestion of narrative. I am interested in exploring aspects of the human and animal condition through relationships between the self and the other. I proclaim the animal as autonomous and self- referential, but also as an emblem of the human condition. This paper addresses the significance of the animal as a means to explore psychological and social issues concerning both the human and the animal, while also discussing struggles in my artistic practice and psychological tendencies as a maker of images.

The psychological animal is a way in which humans attempt to articulate and

reflect on their existence through the medium of animal life. Representations of animals serve as a direct way of linking humans with wildlife through the bond of feeling, as this connection is significant in considering aspects of both the animal and the human condition. Explorations of emotional states of animals became notably evident in the Romantic period where animals were represented as both forces of nature and metaphors for human behavior, as they sought to make a connection. This is to suggest that their depictions of animals are of their natural state or condition of being, where actions or gestures do not have to be entirely anthropomorphized or exaggerated, but can be subtle and more true to the behavior of the subject itself. 1 Within my work I am interested in coupling gracefulness and awkwardness, tenderness and tragedy to create a duality in the work that generates an empathetic response for both animals and humans simultaneously. My work challenges historical and contemporary representations of the animal with the intention to express how animals and their condition of being echo our own by both honoring the animal as autonomous and as an emblem of the human condition. As humans we have a need and desire for intimacy and connection with others. We have a need to find relatability, relationships and connections in the other through mind and body. Deprived of intimacy in my everyday relations, I have developed a strong need for physical and emotional intimacy with my process and subject. I work with watercolor pencils in both a sensitive and crude manner using my sweat and saliva, hands and fingers to manipulate the material onto paper. This personal and direct connection, much like 1 Eileen Crist. Images of Animals: Anthropomorphism and Animal Mind. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2000; pp. 55 1

caressing or grooming an animal, gives me the intimacy I need in the work as I bring the animal into being. This intimacy is both constructive and destructive, laced equally with desire and fear, presence and absence. Drawing becomes a place for intimacy that allows for touching the subject when actual touch is at once desired and daunting.

(Fig. 1) JenMarie Zeleznak, Clandestine Heartaches Buried Years Deep in Stagnant Days, watercolor pencil on paper, 2011

It is through this black [of the iris] that we confront the gaze of an animal, partly with fear, with curiosity, with familiarity, with mystery. We see ourselves in its eyes whilst sensing the irreconcilable otherness of an intelligence ordered around a world we can share in body but not in mind. 2 Bill Viola I have been interested in animals for as long as I can remember. Only recently, however, have they appeared in my work. Growing up, I was afraid of most wild animals because it was ingrained into my mind that they could hurt me, though I never understood why they would want to. It was only within the last ten years that I moved beyond those 2 Bill Viola. Reasons For Knocking At An Empty House: Writings 1973-1994. London: Thames & Hudson. pp. 143. 2

irrational fears and decided to study them, read about them and interact with them, because I wanted to know the truth. I wanted to find out for myself what it is about these nuisance animals that evoke such a fear and disgust in most people. However, I did not find fear and disgust. I found a deep connection when observing and understanding their social relationships. I felt myself empathetically responding to my own perceptions about these animals and directly relating them to my own experiences and relationships. I started using nuisance animals in my work within the last two years. Moving from the Northeast to the South, I found myself surrounded by an entirely new ecosystem. It was completely foreign to me. I didnt feel connected to the nature here. It was in that realization that I began to feel nostalgic for the nature of Northeastern Ohio, where I grew up and spent my entire life up until this point. I missed the raccoons, possums, skunks and deer. I felt a loss for something I feared for so long. I was searching for a connectedness. I had a need to form an intimacy with these animals in my drawings, to fulfill an emptiness in my life. Empathy is fundamentally an attempt at translating feelings by drawing upon pathos. As humans, we have to transform an animal into a human being in order to attempt to understand the other. We attach our own consciousness to an animal and auto-affectedly respond with human emotions towards them, treating them as though they were capable of response. This is essentially an act of anthropomorphism, which perpetuates a satisfying relationship with those we desire to know but are not able to understand. Animal existence is essentially thought of as separate from humans. We have created an artificial boundary between ourselves and other animals. The unique capacity of the human mind is one of the few things that separate us from other animals and is the

conceptual foundation upon which evolution has been built. As we have created the illusion of control through mental concepts, it has been imbedded in the human mind that animals have no control over their own lives. We have imposed so many thoughts and concepts onto the animal that there seems to be no way of going back to the animal as purely autonomous. Through eons of exploitations and misunderstandings, there is an inability to accept their condition of existence as similar to our own. A paradox exists in needing animals to define whats distinctly human. As humans, we seek to move forward but leave animals behind. We have developed a strong interest in alien beings as something possibly more intelligent than ourselves, yet believe animals lack the capacity to reason and are too familiar in considering the possibility of new truths. With animals come feelings of sentiment, apathy, or somewhere in between. That somewhere in between is a significant space in which conflict, struggle, and possibilities of new thought can exist. I attempt to understand this in my drawings. There is something about looking into the eyes of an animal, and feeling the gaze reciprocated by the other, either in fear or comfort. It is easy to feel potential relatability in the face of an animal because it echoes our own features and expressions. I realized the feelings of sentiment associated with the animal face and animal gaze, and I knew it was not just the face that was capable of expressing emotion. It was through that realization that my work began to emphasize gesture and introduce an ambiguity, an uncertainty, which was necessary. For example, I was interested in depicting a skunk turned away from the viewer so as to conceal the face. (Fig. 2)


(Fig. 2) JenMarie Zeleznak, To Never Feel Our Wings Melting No. 2, watercolor pencil on paper, 2011

Skunks are usually looked at in fear and disgust due to their instinctual behaviors of spraying foul odors as a defense mechanism. Skunks are not thought of as graceful or elegant, but rather ugly and repulsive. I sought to emphasize the tenderness and sensitivity of the skunk through an unconventional gesture that opens up the viewer into considering new ways of seeing this animal. The gesture is seemingly tragic and graceful, yet reveals a certain vulnerability that induces an empathetic response. The skunk fluctuates between being perceived as alive and dead, by engaging a visual perceptual shift. Though I draw

from images of dead animals in various ending situations, I seek to infuse the animal with a different kind of energy. This energy, induced by the perceptual shift, creates an allusion to giving in or resisting an outside force, emphasizing the serenity of surrender, a significant aspect of both the animals condition of being and the human condition. The condition of being has always been complex and mysterious, as we try to exist and find meaning in the world. Animals have been a subject in art since human beings first began to express themselves in a visual language. Animal imagery in art evolved as history progressed and it seemed to convey the fundamental relationships between humans and animals throughout each particular time period. The language of symbols became more complex and images of animals about animals evolved into images of animals about us. Beastly animals were transformed into humanized animals, diluting their animal nature. The first evidence of animals as subjects dates back to over 40,000 years, to the Paleolithic Period. (Fig. 3)

(Fig. 3) Lascaux Cave Paintings, raw pigment on rock, circa 25,000 B.C.

The act of painting these animals was thought of as a mystical and ritualistic means of evoking a spirit, an attempt of control. However, many theories about the meaning of these cave paintings have remained controversial as there are no concrete sources from which to draw information, other than the remains of what was left behind. This notion of the animal as spiritual and sacred carried on through the Egyptian and Roman time periods, where animals began to be associated with mythical icons and divine spirits, symbols of each respective culture. Since then, representation of animals began to take on more intimate and naturalistic depictions as artists, such as Albrecht Durer and Jean-Baptist Oudry, considered the animal as a serious subject in art. They began to use the animal as autonomous in still life imagery, divorced from any implications of symbolism. (Fig. 4 and Fig. 5) However, during this time, the depictions of animals were generally interpreted as social documentations, commissions, and patronage status symbols. These works showcased the artists technical skills, personal interests and curiosity of nature, but seem void of empathetic meaning.


(Fig. 4) Albrecht Durer, Hare, watercolor pencil on paper 1502

(Fig. 5) Jean-Baptist Oudry, Hare and a Leg of Lamb, oil on canvas, 1742

Animals have been used as symbols in diverse world cultures and in different eras of human history. Animal art transitioned and developed into more profound philosophical implications, and showed parallels with the scientific discoveries and cultural changes of 8

the time. For example, acknowledgment of animal rights and environmental ethics were surfacing, responding to the use of animals for scientific and medical experimentation to advance humanity and to benefit human desires. Animal rights encompass the idea that the most basic interests of animals should be afforded the same consideration as the similar interests of human beings. In Images of Animals: Anthropomorphism and the Animal Mind, Eileen Crist describes to great lengths the Naturalists portrayal of animal life, relative to 19th century animal artists. Crist sets out to give accounts of animal life that are faithful representations, and explains it through the concept of Verstehen, which involves subjective import of action so as to gain an understanding of animals and its connection with human life. In connection to this concept, phenomenologist Alfred Schutz argues that the human social world is experienced from the outset as a meaningful onethe Others body is not experienced as an organism but as a fellow-man. 3 We gain knowledge, even if fragmentary, from everyday relationships and experiences. Meaning created from these experiences of practical perceiving and reasoning through is where the meaning of others actions is understood. That is to say actions are meaningful and their meanings are essentially available. Meaning of animal life is conveyed as internally constitutive of the behaviors and events depicted. 4 In connection to Darwin, this anthropomorphic process, with the foundation of a language based on human associations, implies that the Naturalists point of view is to intend a realistic depiction of animal life in their natural habitats. (Fig. 6)

3 Alfred Schutz. The Phenomenology of the Social World. Oxford: Heinemann Educational, 1972; pp. 55 4 Eileen Crist. Images of Animals: Anthropomorphism and Animal Mind. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2000; pp. 53 9


(Fig. 6) John James Audubon, Virginia Opossum, colored engraving, 1845

Increasingly drawing attention to an old philosophical debate, art began to emerge in which animals were represented as capable of self-reflection, as anthropomorphized to greater or lesser degrees. Animal art in the 19th century began to respond to disputes regarding the status of animals and anti-cruelty movements, and resulted in a growing sympathy towards animals. Many of the works made during this time had a heightened sense of romantic imagination and emotional drama. 19th century artists, such as Theodore Gericault and Edwin Landseer, often depicted animals in distress that imbued them with human emotions. (Fig. 7 and Fig. 8) In The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals, Darwin proposed the possibility of animal consciousness as directly witnessed through various forms of reasoning and observation. He acknowledges the relevance of describing states of being in animals, and the subtleties and complexities of experience that these concepts imply.5 Darwin has ascertained that many well-known modes of expression are essentially universal, such as that of happiness, love, sorrow and grief. In order to depict 5 Charles Darwin. The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animal. Filiquarian. 2007. 10

animals that seem to exude human emotions, they are essentially romanticized and dramatic, otherwise they seem stagnant and void of meaning.

(Fig. 7) Theodore Gericault, Study of a Dead Cat, oil on canvas, 1822

(Fig. 8) Edwin Landseer, Study of a Dead Stag, oil on cardboard, 1802-1873

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Personification has burdened the animal in art since the 17th century, causing the subject of the animal to be easily dismissed. In investigating the complex issues of animal representation in various states of stagnation, one of the prominent concerns seems to lie in anthropomorphism and a seeming fear of sentiment. For much of the 20th century, the depiction of animals in art was regarded a kitschy subject and furthermore, undeserving of serious consideration. Steve Baker, contemporary art critic and animal theorist, is interested in the animals key role in Postmodernism and Contemporary art. He suggested that contemporary artists engaging animal representation seem to be shifting from the historical nature of symbol and metaphor, and moving more towards embracing awkward, provisional, and rather unflattering identities getting close to the animal without worrying too much about the consequences.6 There is an intriguing shift away from the kitschy, sentimental animal and traditional wildlife illustrations that has seemed to plague animal representation in art for quite some time now. Baker feels that the problem with arts more straightforwardly realistic, beautiful, or sentimental representations of animals is that our very familiarity with them renders the depicted animal effectively invisible. This thought by Baker provokes a freeing of the animal from its representational burdens and insincere associations. Embracing the nuances of animality with uncertainty and curiosity, Baker suggests that there needs to be a type of rupture to the history of animal representation; to seek to re-define, or conceivably un-define, our experience of looking at animals. It involves an avoidance of the easy, the attempt to turn meanings around and a belief in the possibility of using art to see animals differently. Within significant contemporary animal 6 Steve Baker. All Creatures Great and Small. Lecture Notes: February 16, 2010. Zacheta and the British Embassy in Warsaw. pp. 4 12

art there seems to be an interdependence of engaging with unfamiliar or contradictory representations. As a consequence, many artists are choosing to disengage the animal as a symbol and metaphor, in a postmodern attempt to un- frame the way we look at animals. This is significant in the molting away of preconceptions and familiar identities, as well as finding a space for considering truths about ourselves as much as the possibility of truths in animals.

(Fig. 9) Simen John, When the Kingdom Comes (Untitled), digital photograph, 2008

Contemporary artists engaging the animal rely heavily on the viewers ability to see and interpret an alternative view of the world. For example, Simen Johan, a contemporary Swedish photographer, plays with reality, illusion, and believability through depicting strange and slightly off situations. For example, in an untitled work from the 2006 series,

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When the Kingdom Comes, Johan presents a fox couple in the foreground of a vast terrain of what appears to be an overcast dreary winter day. (Fig. 9) Eloquently posed, the fox couple appears in distress as they squint with tears draining from their eyes and their noses covered in dried blood. They are depicted in opposition to their symbolic meaning of cleverness and adaptability. Clearly, these foxes express signs of weariness and an inability to withstand their current conditions. The negation of symbolism functions to un-frame associations one might have had about foxes in general, providing the possibility of new knowledge that the viewer can find truth in. Nonetheless, the sheer believability of this image is arresting and beautifully unsettling. Johans flawless technical ability in large-scale photomontage is so well- rendered that it successfully keeps the viewer from being too distracted by the fact that these images have been manipulated, allowing the viewer to respond to the strife-ridden humanistic expressions the foxes are so eloquently emoting. Though the animals might appear personified, as Johan represents them in a world seething with life, they more significantly provide allusions to existential experiences while simultaneously transforming the way we look at animals.

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(Fig. 10) George Boorujy, Deer Near Ennis, ink on paper, 2004

Contemporary artist, George Boorujy, transforms the way we look at animals as he engages negative space in his work to psychologically activate the space. (Fig. 10) This puts the animals in his drawings necessarily out of context, which in turn makes the viewer look at it more closely and question it. His drawings essentially work on every level, each providing different impact, sensation or experience depending on what each respective viewer brings to the work or that they are open to relating to it in a new way. Boorujys use of positive and negative space creates an emotional, inward space. There is no physical place to associate with the subject. The natural environment and context a viewer would expect is missing. It becomes an intangible, yet perceptively real space; a space of the mind.

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Idealism, with its travelling companion doubt, is driven by a misplaced belief in perfection a concept setting an inaccurate route to what-might-have-been, to the past, and even to perfection itself. Is there a method more pertinent than perfection to the ways we understand our place in the world, and in which art can complicate what we think we know? 7 - Lisa Le Feuvre || Failure

(Fig. 11) JenMarie Zeleznak, With Whole Hearts Yet Broken Words, watercolor pencil on paper, 2011

I make work from a certain emotional space that is full of negativity, pain and loss. I do not know how to make work from any other emotional space than this. It is from the desire and absence of the other in my personal relationships that motivates me to create, and that I create from. I make work from a familiar space; a space of psychological torment. What is known is what is sought, even if what is known is wounding.8 Violations of this space create mental instability, deliberate or unforeseen. I have an irrational fear of making art. That fear exists because I create unnecessary anxiety in that I might not be able to 7 Lisa Le Feuvre. Failure. Whitechapel: Documents of Contemporary Art. MIT Press. 2010. 8 James Hollis. The Eden Project: In Search of the Magical Other. Toronto, Ont.: Inner City Books. 1998. 16

reach the emotional space that I need to create from. It induces a compulsive desire to repeat emotional tragedies. If I do not occupy that emotional space, I desperately seek a way to get there. It is the only way I know how to perpetuate an emotional experience. Dr. Frank Tallis, author of Lovesick: Love as a Mental Illness, asserts that artists enjoy

the motivational benefits of emotional distress. One develops a finely tuned sense of intense emotional experiences. In order to create art triggered from intense emotional experiences, the artist must then focus on that experience or idea in an obsessive manner to bring it into being. According to Dr. Tallis, artists chose to court emotional turmoil to enhance their creativity. By self-perpetuating vicious cycles of rapture and despair, creative potential is released because suddenly there are words and visual images to express our feelings. 9 This self-fulfilling prophecy is the foundation of my artistic practice, where I find myself constantly battling my inner critic, in everyday relationships and the process of creating. These conflicting feelings of the mind and of the heart seem to complicate reality versus actuality and the rational versus the irrational. An instilled fear of not being able to get to that emotional space to create leads to obsessive-compulsive patterns; to seek control of the other or the circumstances that offers the illusion of control. My process and my subject involve inducing variables that struggle. I create them to force myself to experience emotional turmoil by estranging social and romantic relationships, whether real or imagined. It ends up becoming very real either way. This self-sabotaging cycle creates hardships where there were none and ruins relationships before they even begin.

9 Frank Tallis. Love Sick: Love as a Mental Illness. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press. 2005. 17

This process of creating is at once constructive and destructive. Though it may be wounding, I know no other emotional condition to create from, nor do I want to.

(Fig. 12) JenMarie Zeleznak, Forget the Backwards Walk Through Liminal Windows You Never Knew Existed, watercolor pencil on paper, 2011

I find myself in a constant state of conflict as I move between the roles of maker and viewer. As a maker, I find myself in anguish as my inner critic renders the creative process excruciatingly painful. I relentlessly feel the need to create a magnum opus. There is no

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grey area in between, but rather psychological burdens and consequences. This way of thinking has been ingrained in me ever since I started making art. The seemingly unnecessary hardships I create for myself are essentially necessary. They complement and confirm allusions of my fixation with variables that struggle. There is a lot of pain in the building up of emotions that become the motivation to make the work. Though the rigidity in my studio practice and estranged everyday relationships are crippling, there is a payoff in the end, as a viewer, that fills a void if even for a moment. As a viewer I feel moved by the images I create because of the ultimate emotive nature of the work. This is the moving art I want to be surrounded by and the type of art that I feel is lacking in the world. This is the reason for perseverance. This is the reason for making art.

(Fig. 13) JenMarie Zeleznak, Study, graphite on vellum, 2011

I spend hours upon end on a quest for the perfect image. This perfect image tends to

embody an affecting gesture that speaks to the pains of the human condition. Obsessively looking at images of animals in various ending situations, very few make it into my collection of potential source material. Not all images of animals, dead or alive, lend themselves to expressing the pains of the human condition. Dead animals are constantly 19

present on the side of the road yet most people think nothing of it. We are quick to dismiss the seeming insignificance of their life. The lifeless animal gestures I have come to emotionally relate to, express a deeply

emotive moment of absence and surrender. (Fig. 13) I seek to preserve those moments in my drawings. It is necessary that the images I choose be true to the animals form. I am interested in maintaining their gestures and experiences so as to honor the authenticity of the animals condition of being. The unaltered natural gesture I am searching for points towards actual animal emotions and experiences that I relate to human emotions. I seek a feeling and sensation in the images that move me. To be moved by something is an intuitive response, a pure feeling, and the perceptual ability to know without knowing how you know. It is that immediate feeling that the images I seek give me, from a place beyond the thinking mind, a conscious expression in the present moment. However, it could be weeks before I decide to pursue those images and translate

them into a drawing. I just want to be sure the image is really speaking to me in the way I imagined it to be. Once I decide the images potential, I trace contours of the animals onto vellum. (Fig. 14) Sometimes there are multiple tracings of the same image so as to bring two disparate figures together or to contemplate composition. This stage is important to my process as taking the animals out of their original context of the photograph into a line drawing brings the images of the animals into a form devoid of their original meaning and associations.

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(Fig. 14) JenMarie Zeleznak, Study, graphite on vellum, 2011

The viewer is then able to connect to the work on an emotional level, becoming contemplative about the gesture in the psychologically charged negative space, which concerns itself with inward thoughts and self-reflection. These tracings are not immediately acted upon. They hang on my studio wall for quite some time as some become more significant and meaningful, while others fall to the wayside and are never pursued. The ones that arent good enough dont necessarily get thrown into the trash. They make their way into a collection of rejected drawings that are occasionally revisited or reconsidered. Otherwise, they just become piles of rejected drawings that, for whatever reason, cannot be fully discarded. Perhaps there is a satisfaction in this process, because for once in my life, I am the rejecter and not the rejected. Ive become more a drawer than painter. There is a disconnect for me when using a paintbrush. The connection I find with pencil to paper is much more satisfying and intimate, although drawing often makes me feel awkward, incapable and embarrassed. I feel much more vulnerable and exposed when drawing. I have an idea of what drawing is

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supposed to be, that has been instilled through classical standards of rendering a perfected image. Though I know drawing is not limited to mimetic representation, I cant help but feel constantly burdened by a historical standard that simply does not exist today. I fear drawing and yet I choose to draw, deliberately putting myself in a position to feel inadequate and uncomfortable. Anxious scribbles and neurotic mark-making hastily fill in the animal form. These marks are then quickly eradicated and obfuscated because they werent good enough. This process of revealing and concealing repeats itself over and over again in hopes that after repeating this process so many times, the masked layers of marks will appear confident. I do not make marks with confidence. I have never made marks with confidence. I have always felt the need to blend the marks I make, perhaps to cover up the insecurities I feel when drawing. The obsessive-compulsive layering, of what become blended marks, speak to the fact that all of the previous ones were not good enough. The viewer will, more than likely, never know this. In its finished state, layers of gradients and nuances of color are blended together like a color-field embodied within a form. I meditate in these moments.

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(Fig. 15) JenMarie Zeleznak, I Fade from Myself, and Miss You Again, watercolor pencil on paper, 2011

Strictly speaking, projection is never made; it happens, it is simply there. In the darkness of anything external to me I find, without recognizing it as such, an interior or psychic life that is my ownSuch projections repeat themselves whenever man tries to explore an empty darkness and involuntarily fills it with living form. 10 -Jung I use the animal as a means to explore both the animal and the human condition. I draw from extremely personal experiences, such as struggles in my romantic relationships and studio practice as an artist. I am able to distance myself from them through the animal, as they then become a representation of an experience, and not necessarily the actual 10 Marie-Louise Von Franz. Projection and Re-Collection in Jungian Psychology. Open Court Publishing Company. 1985. pp. 73-74 23

experience itself. It becomes self-referential; a representation of its own pathos, a portrait of its own gesture. I, as much as the viewer, need to see it as someone else other than ourselves. According to Derrida, We are not ourselves without representations that mediate us, and it is through those representations that emotions get felt. 11 This is the innermost space between thinking and being. The animal, with a projected consciousness, begins to speak to us in our own language while the image of the other also remains intact. The plurality of this multi-layered, intense and mysterious process induces a psycho- physiological experience in the viewer, not merely cognitive. Therefore, the psychological animal is experienced as an image and it is the image that generates the experience of the actual animal, in body and mind. The animal remains autonomous, yet simultaneously is the medium through which I attempt to articulate and reflect on my own experiences. Throughout my work, I portray and project myself onto the animal as a means to explore the damaged psyche while also honoring actual gestures and experiences of the animal. The animal is rendered into isolation, so as to focus inward on absence of connections and unfulfilled desires. I attempt to give an intangible force a voice through a subject that is essentially unable to speak for itself. I want both conversations, about the human condition and the animal condition. The approximated representations create relatability between the work and the viewer, and the work and myself that is necessary. The animals remain essentially true to form and gesture, not exaggerated or intentionally anthropomorphized. My tortured process is informed by human emotion, by loneliness, desire and obsession. These emotions are translated in the neurosis of my process. The obsessive mark making, or means of rendering the animal form, mimics the fur while also 11 Rei Terada. Feeling in Theory: Emotion After the Death of the Subject. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. 2001. pp. 21 24

being emblematic of the depth and complexity of the animal and its emotive form. It also becomes emblematic of the complexity of human emotions. The lack of environment is a suggestion toward a mentally and psychologically charged space; a space that alludes to existentialist views on the human condition such as lack, loss, disconnect, and uncertainty. This space allows a connection on an emotional human level by depicting the animals out of their original context into a negative space that becomes introspective and internal. The psychological implications of this space are both discomforting and familiar; there is at once both a presence and an absence. The intimacy and empathetic nature of my process speaks to my fidelity towards the animal as emotive and autonomous, just as my fidelity towards the expression of my emotions of my personal experiences speaks to the pains of the human condition. It is in this duality that there is room to think about psychological and social issues concerning both the human and the animal.

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