REVIEW by Juliet Stephens, Creative Arts Psychotherapist
Scribble to Draw breathes life into legacy. Artist Helen Averley uses Biographic illustration to create personalised images of the moments, memories, people and places of your life story, to conjure a visual history that can easily be shared with others. It is a process of reclaiming that which has been lost – whether this is personal or cultural. In the most profound way it can offer a way to process loss and restore identity.
Biographic illustration is a tool that transcends boundaries of time and space; it can reach back to translate and connect personal, familial or cultural lore into the present. Moments from time can be captured in a snapshot full of personality and vibrancy which will resonate right through time to the viewer in the present day. History and legacy can be held and stories revived.
An archivist herself, Helen has curated her own family history back through the centuries, using biographic illustration to create truthful and historically accurate images of her own life and that of her ancestors based on known stories and locations. Using what is known and being able to offer a coherent interpretation has allowed Helen to share in ways that can be immediate and also emotive. “Biographical illustration has enabled me to curate the memories of my elders. Others can understand it in a different way”.
The image itself – and the process of creating it – can both have a profound emotional impact and offers unique healing potential. There is freedom in both understanding the magnitude of the impact of life’s events and being able to hold it symbolically in a tangible visual image.
There is vast scope and varied application for Biographic Illustration. Images can be short sketches or detailed images based on stories, recollections and personal memorabilia. Illustrations can be present day or a long way back in time and the subjects of the image can be personal or ancestral. Through this work, Helen can follow certain threads of your life’s rich tapestry and provide a personalised memento providing you with meaning and legacy.
“Art is a way or survival” – Yoko Ono
“A picture is a poem without words” – Horace
“Art Speaks where words are unable to explain” – Teresa Peres
“Art is an irreplaceable way of understanding and expressing the world” – Dana Gioia
“Art transcends cultural boundaries” Thomas Kinkade
“A picture paints a thousand words” – Anon
APPLICATIONS
See how Biographic Illustration in various forms can be used in different contexts:
Refugees Support groups – working with people dislocated from homeland to provide a tangible window to lost lands. The power of this process comes from the richness of specificity in recreating a familiar space – colours, fabrics, botany, objects, orientation within the space. This visual portal can offer people a way back home.
Lifeworks – a visual archive of moments, images from a client’s life which can present a visual timeline of people and places. This provides a context to one’s life story, a curated collection of significant moments and transitions.
Elders – Personal recollections which can be a springboard for storytelling, or just a personal memoir. Trace your own personal history through images of changing fashions, faces and firsts – the places you lived and worked; the stories you wish to tell.
Heritage Contexts – Biographic Illustration can support the education and interpretation of the collective narratives curated by Museums and their communities. The portrayal for instance of a mining and its role in the identity of a community can be explored through the interpretation of artefacts, oral history and historic events personalised through illustration. Thus enabling people to better integrate these contexts into their personal biography, or enable them to better relate to experiences of others.
Working with children – Helen’s Biographical illustrations when accompanied by her childhood drawings are a useful tool to make her a ‘virtual peer,’ since she too used to draw like a child. This supports those who do not feel ‘good at art’ to make their own work.
Individual Commission – Scribble to Draw can help you to realise something that you would like to see; a moment from your personal past, a defining moment, a composite of personal influences
