Fatma Ummanel

Since starting my Art Psychotherapy training, processing through art-making has felt crucial to witnessing art’s intrinsic connection to the self. The seascapes explore my inner and outer worlds. The sun and moon sit between the thresholds of night and day and land and sea. Movement between these thresholds creates a metaphor for the emergence of consciousness, as I grapple training as an art therapist, processing as a client in therapy, between the discovery of myself and others, and the unknowns that swim beneath the surface. The paintings inhibit water and fluidity, the spontaneous selection of marks and colours are attuned to my unconscious feelings.

The collection of paintings also resonate with my dual heritage and feelings of belonging and disconnection between two cultures. I am both reflected and reflecting between the interplay of the colours of the sky and the sea. The juxtapositions of inclusion and exclusion are felt internally through identity and placement, as well as, externally through current social and global events, exploring the endemic nature of the search for ‘oneness’. Freud (1930) saw oceanic oneness as infant’s mergence with mother, fostering; unity, inclusion and sameness. Here, I see oceanic oneness as the extension of psychic transformation through the landscape mirroring the self (Jung, 1961/1981).