Here is my Heart Artwork

Illustration created for the cover of the March 2016 issue of Therapy Today - the journal published by the British Association for Counselling & Psychotherapy. The picture is inspired by Dr Beatrice Allegranti’s article titled: “Embodied Therapy and Dementia”. The cover illustration depicts a woman affected by dementia showing a button to the beholder, "the other." The inspiration came to me when looking at an image I found on Dr Allegranti’s website, a still from her short film: I Can’t Find Myself… While viewing these beautiful images, my attention focused on a coffee cup filled with colourful mother of pearl buttons. The buttons are also on the table, around the cup. The presence of those buttons was very powerful in my imagination and I wanted them to be part of the illustration, in some way. In the final illustration, the woman’s figure is replicated with blurry silhouettes, a symbol depicting her confusion. "The others" relate to her using this momentary and fleeting need to communicate (visually represented by the button) in order to provide a new means of communication (the needle and thread) also a symbol representing the bond between the two sides. The picture also draws inspiration from the last period in my late maternal grandmother's life when she began to show the first symptoms of dementia, i.e., memory loss. Maria’s portrait, through the use of symbols and metaphors, describes a fleeting moment of lucidity and recollection during which the person affected by this harrowing disease seeks contact with the others; her loved ones, in an attempt to reconcile life with their own reality.