Christine Evans

Although mental health is unique to each person, there are overarching emotions that many can relate to, such as uncontrollable feelings of guilt, shame, anger, and embarrassment. Emotions that could potentially unify, yet create division because of societal stigmas of perceived weakness. In this body of work, politics surrounding mental health are deconstructed by abstracting psychological experiences. These mix-media paintings serve as a platform to start conversations, educate the public, and support those who are navigating their mental health journey. Personal struggles with mental health provide inspiration to transform something that once brought shame into empowering vulnerability.

Abstraction of materials creates dark, dramatic texture engulfed within a large scale, to capture mental health’s overwhelming oblivion. As a result, stigmas of deviance, danger, and dysfunction are redefined as complex, nuanced, and captivating. Inspiration from artists such as Jack Whitten and Mark Bradford emphasize nontraditional materials as a means to redefine mental health, in combination with artists Francis Bacon and Alice Neel in their ability to evoke psychological experiences. The figure’s presence is either personified in the painting’s title and materials, or is intensely layered and built upon. Denying visual representation of the figure through build up of thick impasto texture with moments stripped and scraped away, allows the audience to focus on the intangible emotive qualities of psychological abstraction. As a result, the canvas is transformed into a topographical landscape of peaks and valleys, symbolizing how individuals build themselves up when they are broken down in the midst of emotional turmoil.