untitled (cat)

My research is focused on mental illness and art. I come to UIC with a Master of Fine Arts and a background in painting and drawing. I continue to make my own work as I investigate the history of modern art and the lives of those deemed mad. This image represents my research in a number of ways. Like patients suffering from mental illness, I find art-making therapeutic (I too am a “mental patient.”) The pattern and repetition in the image was created through a soothing, automatic and meditative process. My abstract images often take on repetitive motifs that experiment with the kind of mark-making seen here. Drawing is another way of thinking; it is nonverbal and forms a counterpoint to textual thinking. Within the undulating field of triangles are two circles with spokes, almost like wheels. These turn out to be the eyes of a smiling cat. He (a kind of spiritual self-portrait I guess) is fully imbricated by his surroundings. The cat embraces and owns his madness. He uses it. Does the cat absorb the psychosis of the world in which he finds himself, or does it emanate from him? It is a dialectical relationship.