'semblance'

This year I placed a large mirror in my garden. A friend said “Oh be careful, this will open up your space to different and potentially negative energies!”……and yes it did. An English blackbird visits each day and is so distracted by it! It cannot recognise itself!

It did make me think about our relationship with reflective surfaces. We look in mirrors each day and check our appearance. We watch each day as we age and our ‘look’ changes. Each day we adapt to the movement of time and try to find some semblance of self.

There is a social psychological concept called ‘Looking glass self’ and it suggests that a person’s self grows out of society’s interpersonal interactions and the perception of others. How we think about ourselves is directly correlated to how we think we are perceived by others….and yet we can’t see ourselves as others see us. To do this we would need to literally take out our eyes and look back at ourselves. We give up a sense of self so easily.

Having said this though I wonder if our sense of self should be based on another more challenging and intimate level. To know one’s self truly, while disregarding appearance, is perhaps the biggest challenge for a human being.

I am reminded of the words spoken by a doctor of medicine who accompanied his friend on a visit to a ‘faith healer’ in a distant country. He said he did not understand the ‘medical miracles’ he observed, but that he came away knowing that we are, what we do not see.

In this work I have portrayed a figure that turns away from the flat 2 dimensional plane. Her focus is directed outwards and up suggesting a search for something more powerful and less transient.