Jussi Saarinen: Transforming Oneself Through Painting 33af68b647274c909fcf337347f4fcd7

In this presentation, I suggest that artmaking can have a profound effect on the artist’s overall sense of being. To support this view, I provide a case study of psychoanalyst Marion Milner’s (1957) intensive experimentation with painting. Milner, more acutely perhaps than any other psychoanalytic writer, reflected on the ways in which artmaking relates to overall creative living. To expound further on her project and its existential implications, I make use of philosopher Matthew Ratcliffe’s (2008; 2015) theory of so-called existential feelings. Put broadly, existential feelings constitute a changeable background sense of what is real and possible, and as such structure how we belong to and relate to the world as a whole. Within this conceptual framework, I argue that Milner’s creative progression can be understood both as temporary shifts in existential feeling and as the gradual consolidation of a more permanent existential orientation. Overall, my aim is to show that painting, and especially a long-term commitment to painting, can significantly reconfigure how one finds oneself in the world.