'Ecstasy (I)' (Cartoon - Charles Bonnet Syndrome)
'Ecstasy (I)' (Cartoon - Charles Bonnet Syndrome)
Category: Paintings
Artist: Chris Gollon
Subject: Early Thoughts
Date of Work: December
Year of Work: 2008
Media: acrylic on canvas
Size: 36" x 48"
Private Collection, UK
This painting was produced by Chris Gollon in the last days before days of 2008, and before his departure in January 2009 to take up his Fellowship and participate in the Being Human project.
Like Woman At Prayer (II), this painting also still looks at the Nude, but quietly announces Charles Bonnet Syndrome series. There is a section of the Institute of Advanced Study's 'What does it mean to be Human?' project which is entitled 'Mind/Consciousness' and a subsection called 'The Well Brain'. Chris Gollon was interested to read that the only way we can learn about the brain and its workings is when it goes wrong. Unfortunately, someone close to him is suspected of having the rare Charles Bonnet Syndrome, which can accompany the onset of glaucoma. It means the patient begins to see a family of beings (always mother, father, children of various ages and some with hats or musical instruments, some veiled), often part human, part trees, which start to occupy areas outside the house. After a few days or week they appear to then come in to the house, and eventually move in completely and are a constant presence. Sometimes a spiral descending staircase appears, and they emerge each day and evening from that. They are almost like the cast of Midsummer Night's Dream. What is remarkable is that these are not personal hallucinations or distorted memories, they seem to be common to most sufferers (the latter knowing they are not real, but cannot stop seeing them). It is as though they might be strange, communal memories/visions latent in us all.
This was of great interest to Chris Gollon, since if he brought that to his experiments with the Nude, and with backgrounds that seem part-sky, part atmosphere, part dream, he might get to bring areas of how our brain 'sees' together and at once, and maybe hint at a further dimension. In this painting, we see on a Da Vinci cartoon style, the family (as nudes infused with ecstasy, which is unstable), appear to have a very strong presence yet float as if in a dreamy universe.
Again, Gollon used techniques of mixing water and acrylic, and returning it back at the canvas, or letting it drip, to achieve some intriguing effects.
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