Poetica Magazine

When I was a college student hanging out at the Hillel on campus, the Rabbi's wife had an Art Therapist come in one night to do a session with the students, including my sister and I.  We all were given canvasses and paints and were told to paint whatever we wanted. 

Afterwards, the therapist analyzed our work.  Things were going pretty smoothly as she found the standard stuff:  school issues, relationship issues, family issues.  And then she got to mine.  She immediately asked me if anyone had died in my family.  This was surprising to me, first because she hadn't asked anyone else that question and, second, because I had no intention of talking about this.  I thought I was long over this particular death.  So I told her that my father had died when I was nearly fifteen, but how did she know that?  She pointed to the ballerina I had painted pirouetting on a cliff while down below a flower sat watching.  A large, black-painted fist was wrapped around the flower's stem, snatching it away.  Needless to say, I was the ballerina. 

Interestingly enough, my sister, who had been seventeen when our father died,  had no such imagery in her artwork.  The therapist kept asking, "And you're sisters?  And this was your mutual father who passed away? You don't have different fathers?"  My sister and I, who once looked so much alike that our mother dressed us as twins, nodded and nodded again.  We all grow up together in different families.

Ever since then, I have been amazed that without making an conscious attempt at it, subconscious messages come out in my visual art and my writing. 

Much to my chagrin, the Holocaust pops up in my Mosaic work.  I believe that I'm picking the glass colors I'm using based on pure aesthetics and working on the composition that I designed ahead of time.  But when I look at the finished pieces, there it is:  the Holocaust.  With as much time as I've spent running from the Holocaust stories that my mother told my sisters and me growing up, I was, at first, stunned by this.  After a while, though, a strange type of calm came over me.  It's like my parents' DNA - I can't outrun who I am.  

Have you noticed subconscious themes that come out in your visual art or writing?  Has any of it surprised you? 

Thanks for reading JWorld Cafe, the Poetica Magazine Blog

Linda Pressman, Blog Editor