Lacan & Watercolor

Although I have played with several different art mediums throughout my life, I deliberately specialized in charcoal drawing, drawn to its appearance but also its elemental properties. As charcoal happens to be one of the most forgiving forms of creative styles, I have also subsequently intentionally avoided engaging with watercolor, which is quite antithetical in nature to charcoal. Challenging myself, I started experimenting with watercolor earlier this week, opening myself up to “playing” – whatever the results may be.

In this creative exploration of watercolor, Lacan’s idea of the split subject came to mind. In Lacanian Symbolic order, “the subject is split between conscious and unconscious domains created by the signifier and the law, language and culture, social roles, and norms” (Yalin-Gadot & Hadar, 2023, p. 37). In the Imaginary, however, the subject “exists as ‘ego’…a conscious self who is engaged in relations with specific, significant… others” (p. 37). The subject is also an organism, living in the Real: the part of existence that eludes all Imaginary and Symbolic representations. In brief, a subject is thought to be irreconcilably split apart from the organism: lacking a set identity.

Alluded to before, watercolor pigment is not very forgiving. Directed by the fluidity of water, it lends itself to an unpredictable flow on paper. Thus, channeled through delicate paintbrushes and painfully gentle strokes, I attempted to symbolize the objects and subjects around me. Perhaps needless to say, but the images that came to life in front of me were not the perfectly skilled ones I foresaw painting onto the paper. Despite best efforts, revealed instead was a clear tension in striving to live up to the Imaginary –felt in my longing to produce impressive watercolor images for others’ approval.

Overall, as the watery colors blended into one another, creating these rather unanticipated results, I became curious about what this could mean about the conscious and unconscious intentions I was bringing to the artwork – giving rise to what this might mean about the Symbolic domain. Overall, I wondered: “What might my unconscious be communicating with these random flows of color?” and, more fundamentally, “Who am I apart from ego?”

References

Yadlin-Gadot, S., & Hadar, U. (2023). Lacanian psychoanalysis: A contemporary introduction. London, England: Routledge.