Creative States of Mind: Psychoanalysis and the Artist’s Process
Patricia Townsend, "Creative States of Mind: Psychoanalysis and the Artist’s Process"
English | ISBN: 0367146169 | 2019 | 146 pages | PDF | 1318 KB
English | ISBN: 0367146169 | 2019 | 146 pages | PDF | 1318 KB
What is it like to be an artist? Drawing on interviews with professional artists, this book takes the reader inside the creative process. The author, an artist and a psychotherapist, uses psychoanalytic theory to shed light on fundamental questions such as the origin of new ideas and the artist’s state of mind while working.
Based on interviews with 33 professional artists, who reflect on their experiences of creating new works of art, as well as her own artistic practice, Patricia Townsend traces the trajectory of the creative process from the artist’s first inkling or ‘pre-sense’, through to the completion of a work, and its release to the public. Drawing on psychoanalytic theory, particularly the work of Donald Winnicott, Marion Milner and Christopher Bollas, the book presents the artist’s process as a series of interconnected and overlapping stages, in which there is a movement between the artist’s inner world, the outer world of shared ‘reality’, and the spaces in-between.
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