Creative Practice & Mental Health with; Artist; Coco Monier
Coco is one of my favourite artists. His work resonates with me as it reminds me of the symbology that informs and influences Art Therapy and Transpersonal Art Therapy sessions and methods. The images to me have a likeness and an air of Jungian imagery and thinking.
Age: 31
Occupation: Designer/Programmer
Your creative outlet; Painting and writing
How does your creative practice benefit your well-being/ mental health?
Since my early teens creativity has been an important outlet for me, though it was only recently that I came to understand it as a form of self-care. Before, it was connected to aspirations of greatness. I felt that there was something special I had to offer the world and that if I worked hard enough I could find a way to translate all the chaos of my mind into something meaningful. This path was fraught with tumultuous emotions as I’d swing from euphoric highs to feelings of worthlessness and was constantly comparing myself to peers and the heroes I aspired to be like as a measure of whether I was working hard enough.
I settled into a pattern of creativity that relied on tension at its base. I was essentially waiting around for moments of inspiration and kicking myself for those moments of inactivity. Some of the artwork I made during this time was fantastic and seemed of another world, but it was sporadic, and overall I think my creative practice caused me at least as much distress as it did relief.
I could have carried on this pattern indefinitely, thinking this was how art was made. There is something in our collective psyche that likes to equate art with strife and anguish and I was unknowingly living out this stereotype. I was having a hard time in my life and my usual pattern of escape was not working this time. I had feelings of anger, rage even, that were rattling me and making me question whether I really did know myself, despite all the art and journals I had written.
Like most people, I came to see a therapist out of desperation. I didn’t really think they’d be able to do much and psychology in general left a bad taste in my mouth. From the moment I walked in, I knew I was in the right place. I would often walk away from our little sessions in awe of what had happened… Not because I had been presented with some epic truths but rather by the intangibility of it all. I had done most of the talking but it was as as if she, or the space, had guided me to find something within myself. It was, for lack of a better word, magic.
Through our time together I began to discover a huge dark spot over my creative process. Despite my supposed dedication to creativity and self-discovery, there was a mountain of emotional material that lay untouched by my art.
My process started to change. It became more of an experience. My method was always driven by a predominantly subconscious place. This is a great place to flush out the raw data of feelings, but in the long term I found myself limited to surface explorations: beautiful images, hypnotic imagery, flashy symbols.… Now, that I had a direction to my activity I found my process transformed. There was an internal feedback loop between my dreams, my writing, the symbols that would appear in my painting and then the conversations I would have in therapy. I discovered a thread that connected them all and once again the sense of magic permeated both my life and art. I found recurring symbols: rivers upstream, animal friendship, flowers unfolding, oceans...
I found myself uncovering parts of myself that I had been unaware of my entire life. Questions that I had never even dared to ask. I have a sense of self that makes my life before seem clouded in self-imposed mystery.
Learning curves of your creative practice?
To be honest, while this shift in my practice has left me with a longstanding and sustainable sense of peace in life, it has created something of a stalemate with my art. I still keep a journal and write something every day, the momentum of it all has come to a standstill. It feels as if I have to start over from scratch. My old process was one that relied on tension. Without that same tension in life, it seems difficult to pick up the pen or paints and create in the same way.
I oscillate between acceptance of this back-burner position of art in my life and imposing an imperative on myself to create again. I like the oscillation. I don’t feel so young and nervous anymore that I panic if I haven’t painted in months. There is a mental image of myself as an old man in a studio full of plants, painting in leisure. This is the new big-picture aspiration that I aim towards.
The big picture (coined from W.S. Burroughs) is an important part of this new process. I’m all about the big picture these days. This is the part of me that my previous self, my younger self, would have recoiled at, claiming compromise or mediocrity. My life is so different now though, I can hardly hear this young man’s complaints. I have a little girl now and run a small business with my partner. Needless to say this consumes the lion’s share of my life. Finding time to write a short note to myself feels like an amazing and decadent act of self-indulgence, though I remind myself it is self-care. Art continues to be a lifeblood for me, and I think this extended hiatus is elevating the importance of it for me in the long term, though how I will start again is a great mystery to me… which, in itself, gives excitement and energy to this pursuit.