'Mother' (Charles Bonnet Syndrome)
'Mother' (Charles Bonnet Syndrome)
Category: Paintings
Artist: Chris Gollon
Subject: Being Human
Date of Work: December
Year of Work: 2008
Media: acrylic on canvas
Size: 48" x 36"
Private collection. This painting is the first work Gollon made based entirely on the Institute of Advanced Study's subject matter 'Being Human'. It has gone beyond Gollon's earlier experiments with the Nude, since it uses his acquired visual langauge to tackle a sub-section of the 'Being Human' project, namely 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 was 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. This powerful painting is entitled 'Mother' since she is the mother of the family of hallucinations: part-tree, part-human, part-dream, with the slight hint of a veil. The sky is part-atmosphere, part-sky and part-dream, and the figure seems so monumental, with some primal power. As spectators, we might be forgiven, looking at this image, to be very unsettled if she were to turn to look at us....
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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