Eleventh International Conference on The Image

Abstract

As part of the award-winning Big Anxiety Festival in Australia, an exhibition of mixed-media drawings of plants and seeds was displayed at the University of Sydney, at the same time as two public drawing workshops in the Royal Botanic Garden, Sydney. This paper describes some of the drawing techniques and imagery used in these workshops, and discusses the feedback from participants, who self-identified as suffering from anxiety. Drawing images using different types of line allowed workshop participants to mediate their tacit knowledge of the symptoms and solutions of living with anxiety, and to transition to a lived experience of proactively using drawings to improve their individual cognition, mindsets, and mental health. Utilising the platform broadly afforded by the promotion of Mental Health Month in New South Wales, allowed the drawing exhibition and workshops to be understood within an interdisciplinary context, which embedded their impact in other fields of research, including ecopsychology and biophilia, in a salutogenic model of practice. Feedback from participants demonstrated that they encountered interconnectedness of experience and increased their self-knowledge, while learning how to create images which actively helped to alleviate their anxiety. Further research and exploration of the role that drawing images of plants and nature can play in the construction of learning in the context of individuals struggling with anxiety might offer routes to new knowledge and better understanding.