Mental Illness #3

The Reality of Dissociative Disorder

Watercolors & Sharpie Gel Pens

6 1/2" x 6 1/2"

For this project, my inquiry question that will be guiding my work for our sustain investigations is, "how can I bring awareness to what specific mental illnesses can feel like?" The mental illness I am displaying in my artwork is a dissociative disorder.

The materials I used were watercolors and sharpie gel pens. I used warmer watercolors to create the hands because when I think of a body part, I think of warmth. I used cooler watercolors, specifically blue and purple because I like how they blend; and I altogether chose to use watercolors because I like how you can blend them to create the look I wanted. I chose sharpie gel pens to outline my work and add the little text because I like how smooth they are. As you can see in my experimentation, I tested mixing colors on a separate piece of paper and how they overlapped with a sharpie gel pen before putting them on my final piece to make sure I liked how they were mixing and to test how the watercolors worked with a sharpie gel pen.

Dissociative disorders can make one experience a disconnection between thoughts, memories, actions, surroundings, and identity. I do not specifically suffer from a dissociative disorder, but I do dissociate a generous amount due to my anxiety.

Therefore, to express the feeling of dissociation throughout my artwork, from my personal experience, I displayed hands openly laid out, in the sense of someone looking down at their hands and not recognizing them. I then blended the colors of the hands and the background colors together to create a messy-chaotic look to emphasize how everything (for me) starts blending together and feels "off." Sometimes speaking for myself, I feel as if the floor starts moving, I can't feel my body, or I don't recognize myself looking in the mirror because of the disconnection from reality I will be having; which explains my text I incorporated that I purposefully blended together as well, "nothing's real."