CHRISTINE FOREST, MD
Both abstract painting and psychiatry are intimately involved with changing perspectives and breaking free of confining, artificial boundaries. As a psychiatrist, I help my patients search for and create new circumstances leading to happier lives. As an artist, I try to find new ways toward creating a meaningful body of work that will comfort and inspire the viewer. It took me years to transition from narrowly defined patterns and concepts in my work as a psychiatrist and to embrace a more creative, compassionate and intuitive practice. At the same time, as an artist, it took me years to transition from painting the world realistically, or ‘’as is,’’ to representing it from an abstract perception as a complex universe of emotions and feelings. This is how and why my paintings today embrace a multitude of colors, and dynamic symbolic representations.
A New Dawn, 2020
(Acrylics on Canvas, 30” x 40”)
As a nation, we have all been subjected this year to intense emotional turmoil. We live in fear of illness and death from the pandemic, economic fears, fear of losing important values that define the heart and soul of this country. It feels like a dark, hopeless struggle which is often hidden, denied or minimized. But it is a deadly threat for the mind and soul of each one of us as individuals and as a nation. This painting represents that emotional struggle. But it also represents the empowerment we feel when we find the strength, hope and resilience to push the darkness away and emerge victorious on the other side, into a new and better world, into ‘’a new dawn.’’