Written by Cody Mason
Trigger warning: In this article Cody touches upon areas of trauma, and there are some drawings you may find disturbing.
Once a month, Spyglass will showcase the work of a talented local artist. This month features Cody Mason, whose dark and detailed drawings are used as a tool for self-expression and healing.
Hello readers! I'm Cody, a third year Computer Games Technology student here at UoP, interested in pursuing a wide range of creative arts. In this article I'll focus solely on drawing, what it means to me and how it has helped me, accompanied by some examples of drawings I've done in the past so you don't get too bored whilst I ramble.
Starting Drawing:
I've been drawing for as long as I can remember, doodling in my maths books at school during class or in my sketchbook at lunchtimes. For me, drawing was more of a habit growing up, something I just did if I had my butt on a chair, a piece of paper in front of me and a pen in my hand. It wasn't until I was about 16 or 17 that I started taking it more seriously as a skill to be honed and started incorporating focussed studies into my regular art practice.
Inspiration and Motivation:
I've always looked up to artists ever since I was little. Illustrators such as Yoshitaka Amano, Katsuya Terada, and Jean Giraud (known more widely as Moebius) have had a huge influence on my drawing style and development. When I'm feeling uninspired, I can always find something in their work which breaks me out of my current framing, and shows me a new way to look at the world which amazes me and gets me excited to draw again!
I love the dark, strange, and mystical. I will often be drawn to representations of demons, dragons, spirits, and other mythical and religious symbols which I like to explore through my art.
Drawing as a Tool for Healing:
Drawing has become a primary way of exploring and expressing my inner thoughts and feelings. It's a way for me to sit down with myself and pay attention to how my mind wanders, to give myself the space needed to untangle certain difficult feelings I may have been avoiding, or to make interesting new connections between ideas that I may not have seen before.
I use drawing as a tool to help me think, communicate, and understand myself better. I think anyone else can do this (and should give it a go, too). I like to think of the phrase 'draw out' in the sense that we're coaxing something out and unfolding it in front of us, like a big map (or drawing) of our inner emotional world. Everyone has their own inner emotional experience, whether they're very in tune with it or not, and for a lot of us our inner worlds can be very messy, unpredictable, and painful places.
I feel that drawing in this meditative way- using art as a vehicle to explore and unfold our inner emotional conflict- has done me a lot of good and has given me tools to navigate and integrate my traumas properly. That's not to say that it's an easy road to follow, but it's a road nonetheless, and recent scientific research on using art practice as therapeutic intervention for conditions like PTSD leaves me very hopeful about its ability to help us heal from our past trauma.
Moving Beyond Trauma:
Drawing, of course, is not only about healing, but also about creative thriving. Drawing has been a way for me to appreciate the simultaneous complexity and simplicity of the world around us. You can look at someone's face and find it in beautiful, simple harmony, and yet struggle somehow to translate it onto the page. Let this encourage you to slow down and pay more attention to the minutia and subtle shifts that occur. In paying more attention to something- not feigning attention, but truly attending to something- we are saying "this is worth my time".
When we pay attention to the things we know we should- when we pay attention to the good- the universe rewards us in kind. This is when we learn, when we see how we were going wrong, and we are given the opportunity to correct it. This is when things feel like they just fall into place and we go "Aha! I've got it!". These 'Aha' moments don't need to be grandiose however, as we're often lead to believe. Often, when we're paying attention correctly, we see how there can be lots of little 'aha' moments. Each one of them amalgamating into the experience of joy.
Feeling joy in of itself is rewarding, but I'd argue that it also helps orient us towards our focus more clearly, helps us feel present and positively connected in our bodies and minds to the world around us, and deepens our lived experience.
‘Joy is the present tense, with the whole emphasis on the present’ - Kierkegaard
Closing Thoughts:
It is my hope that some of you reading this will have resonated with some of the topics touched upon here, or that maybe you read something which you disagreed with and it made you consider how you feel about drawing at a deeper level.
Nothing would warm my heart more than to know that some of you walked away from this article half-way through reading to go make something, so I thank you dearly for taking the time to read this to its conclusion.
You can find me on: Instagram, where I post personal drawings; Artstation, where I curate my more professional artwork; and Twitter, where I post my game development progress.
About The Artist: Cody Mason (he/him)
Hello! I'm Cody, a third year Computer Games Technology student here at UoP, interested in pursuing a wide range of creative arts.
(This piece was edited by Amber Turner-Brightman)
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