Recently, I had the great pleasure of seeing my work published in Belgian journal 'The Kleksograph - an International Review of Art and the Subconscious' for the third time.
'The Kleksograph', which is edited by Peter Van Belle "seeks to explore and celebrate art where the membrane between it and the subconscious is at its thinnest."
On this occasion the joy of being published was even more special, as I had collaborated with my brilliant sister visual artist and total legend Hollie Bell.
Hollie is an incredible artist and I am genuinely in awe of her skills. When I decided to submit my haibun 'Demon' to 'The Kleksograph', I knew she would be able to create a fantastic image that would illustrate it beautifully.
Hollie has had an interest in art from a very young age. She completed a diploma in art and went on to complete a degree in 3D Art and Design, where she specialised in ceramics. One of her many artistic interests is putting across the experience of invisible illness in images that really get to the core of what it's like to live with an illness that nobody realises is there.
In the case of my haibun 'Demon' and Hollie's image 'My Demon', the illness is anxiety and depression. The piece describes what it's like to live with the after effects of having an abusive person in your life. It imagines them as being present beyond a veil in a person's mind, still saying the cruel things they said when they were still in that person's life and undermining them from within. Hollie created a fantastic image to go with it, based on a previous image she had created, showing the demon manifesting behind a woman sitting in the foetal position. It's an eerie image which evokes the feeling very well.
‘Demon’, a pararhyming Haibun, explores the long lasting impact of psychological abuse on an individual. It came about as a result of a challenge I was set, to write a poem using pararhymes. As I attempted to write the poem, I found it difficult to make good use of the pararhymes without the poem sounding archaic. I recalled completing a writing exercise on Haibun - a Japanese form, in which a short piece of prose ends with a thematically linked Haiku. Putting the pararhymes into a prose form brought them to life in a way that I really liked, with the pararhymes giving a discordant and sinister quality to the writing, to really emphasise how the recalled words of others, however cruel or incorrect they might be, can linger in someone’s mind, doing damage, long after they have cut ties with that person.
Speaking about her image 'My Demon', Hollie said: “The original idea was creating a demon on your back that influences you but that other people can’t always see. That could be a physical person, an emotional experience, or an idea of a demon, so anybody can take their own experience from it. In the image, I used elements from Jo’s poetry, but also personal experience of mental health and invisible illnesses. It was an image I already had in my head, but elements like the colour of the eyes, the shape of the fingers were all from the descriptive words that Jo used for her poem. I found the process of collaborating really good, because I think it added another perspective to my art, making it a much deeper image.”
You can read 'Demon' and view 'My Demon' alongside a number of fabulous pieces of writing and artworks in Issue 14 of ‘The Kleksograph’, which is available to download from kleksograph.be
Hollie has prints and cards of her artwork available for sale from her website. For more information, please look her up online.
Web: www.holliebell.co.uk
Facebook: facebook.com/holliebellart
Instagram: @invisibleillnessart
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