ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the concept of the artist’s ‘internal frame’, defining it as an internal containing structure, specific to the artist’s medium, within which the artist’s training and experience become activated. Within this internal frame, the artist enters her working state of mind and feels free to respond to the developing artwork. The chapter considers the difficulty of crossing over into the internal frame and looks at the strategies artists develop in order to do this. It also considers the difficulty of moving from one internal frame to another. It draws on Michael Parsons’ concept of the psychoanalyst’s ‘internal analytic setting’ and also refers to the work of Marion Milner and to Christopher Bollas’ concept of the ‘transubstantial object’. It includes quotations from interviews with artists Russell Mills, Dryden Goodwin, Sian Bonnell and Henrietta Simson.
