Discomposure

..."the state of being disturbed or agitated" (Google)

Is this the correct name or description of this new self-portrait? or does a synonym of discomposure reflect the positioning of the hand over the face more aptly? i.e. Perturbation?

"a state of agitation" or an unhappy or worried mental state (vocabulary.com, s.d.)

Perturbation potentially, and I say this with intent, sounds more apt as it vocalises the fear or even anxiety behind the hand that is seen in the singular eye - the same eye that is seen in each of the self-portraits as the fingers way heavily on the eyelid whilst hiding or disguising almost half of the face therein changing how the work may be perceived and its underlying narrative. The initial concept was simply to outwardly portray through a visual articulation of my neurodiverse masking but instead it does show a distinct discompsure that speaks of my current frame of mind - the emotional elements of the masking and in particular how I am often flustered or upset by specific upcoming events. However, perturbation feels more relevant as I approach the event itself, or perhaps am taking part as it creates distinct physical disruptions to my normal routine - the physicality of the event creates both mental and emotional upheaval whereby I am wanting to literally peak out from my hand or to hide and conceal my face through social awkwardness and fear that I may in fact embarrass myself by saying something untoward or sharper than I intend through just sheer nervousness! Before I go further I must acknowledge there has been 7 months between this piece and the last which was initially due to needing to prepare, through the development of new fungal drawings, for Halloween and Christmas events. However, life also happens creating distractions or interruptions that have impacted upon just simply being able to draw - or even wanting to draw. I say this, not just to explain my absence from social media, this blog and the website but also to validate it to myself and perhaps inadvertently, the partial covering of my face could be seen to reflect my temporary disappearance within the online world.

Due to this almost non-existence that has occurred I am finding myself wanting to more deeply unpick the decisions I made during the drawing phases including the primary monochromatic palette of the face with just the eye and mouth being in colour. Why? what is so appealing to just using black, white and the relevant gray-scale values? is it simply that behind the mask, the camouflage I attempt to wear, that I often see the world in simplistic terms? I know I am infuriatingly literal, even to me, and hence it takes effort to see a wider picture as my mind seeks to focus on the small details of life - a larger frame just creates potential to overload sensorially, physically or emotionally whereby safety is found in something more contained. Furthermore, I noted during the making that I struggled quite desperately and discouragingly with the hand despite loving drawing them - the positioning meant it was impossible to work directly from life and yet my photographs refused to yield in terms of accuracy of colour, tone and shade as I needed to use my phone camera rather than my more technical main camera in order to even get a glimpse of form, space, line and colour. I outright grappled with the thumb or more accurately the shading of the forefinger and area of hand that adjoined it as it looked detached or incorrectly proportioned despite me double or often triple checking to ensure accuracy - I became agitated and flustered, discomposed, due to what often felt like a wrestling match between my mind and my hand as the intra-active becomings between the different co-constituent parts that create the physical act of drawing and its resulting image were not realising the potential of the concept. I question whether the singular eye, my eye, reflects that agitation, the frustration of the decisions and the making process or whether the eye instead created opportunities to adapt and let the fluidity of change occur through a natural evolution?

It is interesting that during the making of the piece I wrote the introduction to my forthcoming solo exhibition: "Emerging .... ….. or ‘Time to Shout Quietly’ speaks of the ongoing intra-active becomings that occur between the artistic subject, and explorations of identity.

The conceptual work for which I am more usually known commonly incorporates my own hands and eyes or even alludes to unseen MRI imagery. as I seek to speak of human-fungal connectivity. However, these pieces also subtlety reference the personal identity of the artist whilst never fully revealing a sense of self – the same sense of self that is seen to emerge through an ongoing series of self-portraits that consider personal and artistic identity through almost  introspective study of the  intra-actions between the art, artistic materials and the artist."

Within this piece the sense of self is directly that of my neurodiversity through the intensity of its creation - the perceived failures forced new intra-active becomings to actively force a resolution to personal artistic difficulties. I needed to work out what these intra-actions were and what were the specific bodies that were creating them - the art was not making itself but nor was I creating it without the usage of pastels, paper and the photographic reference to paraphrase, if I recall it correctly, Barad's own example of a book not writing itself nor did she write the book (Barad, 2007). To consider the failure to portray the junction of the thumb and forefinger is to consider the intra-action that is taking place during the making process and if my neurodiverse brain cannot actively find a solution to see how to take corrective action in in terms of the shading, through the physicality of the soft pastels then is there the potential for exploring alternative intra-active becomings? or is this just me creating word salad as I seek to personally understand the process of making that resulted in substantial discomfort and yet again further consternation?

It is rare I find myself wanting to actively dispose of a piece of work - to start afresh with a new piece of paper in order to correct the angle of the hand and in particular the aforementioned thumb which I am aware, through the writing of this blog, I am actively drawing direct attention to. The hand also feels disconnected from the face, my face, .... it feels as if it belongs to someone else so is this intentional at the point of creating? or do I want to speak of how I often feel disconnected within a neuronormative world as a neurodiverse person? the hand is potentially seen as belonging to a second person but it is my hand that is attempting to cover my face in order to become invisible or hidden as I seek to conceal an innate, and indeed lifelong, shyness. Perturbation as a noun meaning disturbance, anxiety or a state of uneasiness enunciates not the written verbalisation of this blog but the visualisation of the face beneath the hand as it attempts to hide from the cause of the physical and emotional upset.

Before I finish I want to re-visit where I mention un-picking the decisions I have made during the drawing phases and consider this in the context of my exhibition: the un-picking is that of the introspective study of the intra-actions that have occurred - to create each self-portrait I have almost had to give myself permission to be introspective, to look inwards, in order to understand not the person in the photograph but instead the aforementioned co-constituents, as individual entities, to enable entangled agencies. The agency I have, as an artist is impacted by the agency of my sense of self but also the separate agencies of matter whether they are the actual pastels, the paper or even the light that impacts my consideration of values. I do question, philosophically, and without seeking a definitive answer, as I write this late at night, at least tonight, whether I, as the artist, in fact decide the final resolution at the point of its initial creation or whether the evolution of the processes that impact upon the fluidity of the narrative are as a direct result of the intra-actions that have and continue to occur as the series progresses?

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Barad, K. (2007) Meeting the Universe Halfway. USA: Duke University Press.

DISCOMPOSURE Synonyms | Collins English Thesaurus (2020) At: https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english-thesaurus/discomposure (Accessed 27/04/2025).

discompsure meaning - Google Search (s.d.) At: https://www.google.com/search?q=discompsure+meaning&oq=discom&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqBggAEEUYOzIGCAAQRRg7Mg4IARBFGCcYOxiABBiKBTIGCAIQRRg5MgYIAxBFGEAyEQgEECMYJxhGGPkBGIAEGIoFMgoIBRAAGLEDGIAEMgYIBhBFGDwyBggHEEUYPNIBCDIxMjFqMGo3qAIAsAIA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 (Accessed 28/04/2025).

New Materialism (s.d.) At: https://newmaterialism.eu/almanac/i/intra-action.html (Accessed 27/04/2025).

PERTURBATION definition and meaning | Collins English Dictionary (2025) At: https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/perturbation (Accessed 27/04/2025).