In the small, one-time office that is now the gallery space of Birkenhead’s Existential House, the floor is strewn with a number of A4 pieces of paper. These humble sheets are covered by watercolour squares, painted in shades we could roughly think of as red. On the day of my visit, sunlight streams through an adjacent window, creating a shadow-grid on the floor. Bounded within its lines are captured four of these painted sheets; two with their faces meeting the light, the other pair verso, or face down. One, roughly peachy/pink in hue, has a strip of red masking tape on it, suggesting it had landed, rather than been placed there, following a fall from the ceiling. In my mind’s eye I picture it: gravity doing its work as it slices through the air, flip-flops and swirls before finally coming to a stop.
Looking up, paying closer attention now, I see five rows of similar paintings—a colour chart composed of oranges, reds, yellows, and browns. Some are currently firmly attached, others hang suspended, as if caught between a decision to stick or twist; to join their comrades on the ground or to stay where they are. Presumably, as the exhibition wears on, more still will find their way to the floor, swooshing around as they go. The tentative, radiating warmth of the late winter sun chimes nicely with the complementary glow suggested by the range of tones found in the paintings.
In colour theory, these shades, appropriately, are most often associated with energy, stimulation, happiness. Their different hues are not, however, anything to do with the (hopefully) soon to arrive spring. Although they could be considered akin to a kind of renewal, rebirth, or recovery. Referring to the helpful (essential, actually) exhibition text, they represent a code of sorts, relating to the mood of their maker, James Schofield, in specific circumstances. They signify his search to visualise in paint a particular shade of terracotta—an Italian term meaning ‘baked earth’—that began to appear to him while undergoing Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing therapy, or EMDR.
Commonly used by psychotherapists to help people in their recovery from trauma or depression among other things, for Schofield, EMDR was prescribed in the aftermath of the breakdown of a long-term relationship and the realisation of his state of depression in 2019. He likens his depression to ‘a switch getting flicked in my brain that just shut off the majority of my feelings as a self-preservation measure’ originally triggered following his mum having almost died in 2010. He considers the painted works in this exhibition his subsequent attempt to retrieve the specific shade of terracotta that would appear to him only fleetingly during sessions, which he associates with eliciting a ‘strong sense of happiness, contentment, grounding and ultimately love’.
Begun in 2021, the works are ongoing, and he has described this pursuit as a Sisyphean one—that is to say, the shade he summoned (perhaps achieved is the better word?) will always be just out of reach. Given that he has yet to experience the same degree of reaction outside of his EMDR therapy, he concedes that he ‘may never be able to’ again. It is important, then, to understand the paintings not simply as objects to be viewed individually although you could, but as almost ritual symbols that should be considered as part of a much bigger picture.
This macro perspective encompasses and includes mental health, wellbeing and hanging on to a kind of faith that things can and will be better. Although it is never explicitly mentioned in the exhibition texts, that the colour provokes such strong associations for Schofield puts me in mind of synaesthesia, a neurological condition thought to be relatively common among people in the art-world, in which the stimulation of one sense triggers another. In this case, certain heightened feelings evoke a colour and vice versa.
Aside from the paintings and their being tangled up with colour and feelings, just as important to understanding Terracotta Dreams and its conception, is the accompanying conversation between Schofield and his friend, fellow artist and educator, Matthew Merrick. Put together in edited form from an original Google Doc, the back and forth provides much necessary context, depth, and insight into why and how this exhibition came into being. I would, in fact, go so far as to see it as another artwork in the installation. Indeed, it physically appears in the show, sat atop an arrangement of aerated concrete blocks, alongside a cardboard storage box.
In it, the pair discuss the circumstances surrounding what Schofield refers to as ‘longstanding (and largely unrecognised)’ depression, how that impacted his relationships, and the subsequent revelations he experienced with EMDR. ‘EMDR is wild,’ he says at one point, continuing: ‘The best way I can describe my experience was that it was like watching a biography of the worst moments of my life; sometimes in third-person and sometimes in first person’. As such, we can almost read Schofield’s side of this conversation as a sort of self-portrait—one not in paint but in text.
During his period of depression, Schofield describes having not being present and, significantly, drifting away from making art: ‘I started to move more and more towards curatorial projects,’ he says, ‘because I just didn’t feel anything for the work I was making and didn’t have any desire to make anything purely for myself’. This latter revelation adds another dimension still to Terracotta Dreams. Sisyphean endeavour on the one hand they may be, but in another way, the paintings in the exhibition represent a creative re-emergence, a possibility of enjoying that aspect of his work lost to poor mental health. Certainly, there is no clear before and after with depression – at least as I encounter it – but these paintings do signal progress, encompassing not only creativity but also Schofield’s relationship to and engagement with others. ‘I’ve never really been this open about my own emotions, or practice, to other publics before,’ he says at one point.
It is in Schofield’s sharing of this endeavour that a deeply personal, subjective journey becomes something more universal. He speaks of his ‘repetitive act of trying to reproduce the colour’ as providing him with a sense of hope, a way to put into context his ‘own sense of self and experience of the world’. In so doing, these paintings, the accompanying conversation and other elements of the exhibition escape the bounds of one person’s experience, highlighting and encouraging the always urgent (and underestimated) need for empathy. They hint at the ways with which we can all think about our own encounters with such things and, in some way, find solace for ourselves in continuing—as Schofield himself describes in the Google Doc—to put one foot in front of the other in our collective and individual onward travels.
Mike Pinnington is a writer and editor based in Liverpool. He is the co-founder of arts criticism and cultural commentary website The Double Negative
Terracotta Dreams by James Schofield runs from 4 March until 25 March 2022 at Existential House
Published 16.03.2022 by Roy Claire Potter in Review
1,230 words