ABSTRACT
Referring to the artist interviews and to Patricia Townsend’s own art practice, this chapter explores the artist’s working state of mind. The movement from internal experience to the external form of the artwork comes about through repeated experiences of states where internal and external are not clearly differentiated. Marion Milner called this ‘illusion’ and Anton Ehrenzweig referred to it as ‘dedifferentiation’. They both saw the artist as alternating between this state of mind and a more focused and differentiated state in which she can make decisions about the developing work. This chapter departs from Milner’s and Ehrenzweig’s view, introducing the concept of two simultaneous self-states, the ‘extended self’ and the ‘observer self’. These two positions exist in parallel, but one or other is to the fore at any one moment. This chapter refers to the writing of psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, psychoanalyst Marion Milner and educationalist Anton Ehrenzweig. It draws on interviews with artists Jo Volley, George Meyrick, Sian Bonnell, Dryden Goodwin, John Aiken and Deborah Padfield.
