Eddie and Charlie Proudfoot Response🖌

   When searching for artists surrounding mental disorders, OCD, and just mental health in general, I cam across Eddie and Charlie Proudfoot. Two siblings who test the limits of paint on top of photographs.

They use magazines, newspapers, advertising boards, etc, as their canvases. Mostly all of their pieces are of images with the face covered up. There work was put on an exhibition in 2017 which was dedicated to exploring mental health, through art. 

'All these magazines and stuff, not everybody is pretty. We should look past all that dressing and see the inside.'

I think the fact they cover up the faces of these people, this sense of hiding, really relates to my project. Before I started to acknowledge my OCD, I would hide it, so well that no one really knew I had it. I was scared of the judgement, the comments, the embarrassment. I experienced this at first but this slowly started to go as the people around me understood it. I feel a lot of people do experience this at some point, with any mental disorder as their are a lot of stereotypes, and these can cause harm, again, as I have experienced. This was clarified for me when I started to speak and interview people who suffer from it. 

I took some photos of myself, as well as using some I have previously taken in this project, and using their style/technique, created these outcomes.

These ones above, with my face, I think are the most successful. One, in portraying what I was aspiring for and two, visually, they look really interesting and spark questions:

Why is the face covered up?

Who is behind the image? 

What are they trying to show?

I do like these ones here, with the red paint. I chose this colour specifically to symbolise, for me, how those intrusive thoughts feel. I would describe them as like 'alarm bells' going off, them being so loud and so distracting. I thought red did this quite well. Contrasted then with those photos - such a mundane task, but for someone with OCD, these are some of the hardest things to get through.

My thoughts for these were to show the progression of the thoughts, the worry, the anxiety. When doing a compulsion or an action and the thoughts swell up, getting bigger and bigger, so you keep doing it. When it finally gets too much - the end photo with the messy brushstrokes. I think these weren't as successful because of the chaosity of the photo - it takes away the focus.

Some pages from my sketchbook:

Overall, I really enjoyed this response, from start to finish. I loved the actual painting as well as these outcomes. I think they do show to some extent how OCD makes me feel, and I know, from my interviews and research, that others could relate.