Portent Elaine Hirschowitz
PRESS RELEASE – ELAINE HIRSCHOWITZ
Elaine Hirschowitz who was born in Johannesburg and where she qualified as a clinical psychologist as well as completing an Advanced Diploma in Fine Art at Wits, cum laude, has always been fascinated by life drawing. She would draw herself in the nude from the mirror as a teenager. It is a theme she returns to time and again as a means of achieving balance and harmony in her art and in life.
ElaineHirschowitz says she aims to transform her internal anxiety, conflict and confusion into an external harmony.
Elaine has used art as therapy with patients during her career as a psychologist as well as for self therapy. Eight years ago she was diagnosed with breast cancer which hit her ‘like a cyclone’. At the time, and having always practiced art, she had signed up for a Fine Arts degree at Wits and she decided to continue with her course. It was a case of chop chop, cat scans, etc. ‘They took a big chunk out of my breast, completely mutilating me. I was told it could be an aggressive form and too late to have chemotherapy’. Elaine who is gynaecologist’s Sidney’s wife, thought the cat scans were beautiful and encouraged by her lecturers she used these along with surgical instruments and gauze as a central theme in an exhibition entitled ‘Transforming Illness’ which showed both at Wits and the oncology department of the Sunninghill Clinic, receiving positive criticism. She says it was the first time she had done work that she really believed in and she is convinced it caused her recovery.
Hirschowitz believes graphic projections of conscious material are able to escape censorship more easily than words. They are unchanging and durable. Healing is inherent in this creative process and is more than mere sublimation. Conflict is re-experienced, resolved and integrated.
Her work is a search for balance and harmony. Her ordeal with reconstructive surgery intensified her search for balance and harmony in her work. Hirschowitz says she realized how important appearances were. Her perception of how beautiful the body is and how important it was to feel ‘balanced’ were intensified and affected her art. Hirschowitz’s work is a quest for the balance of the darkness and the lightness.
Speaking about her work in the past Kim Berman said Hirschowitz’s work represented ‘sites of struggle’. This exhibition, often achieved through numerous layers of work in the print medium, has a strong feeling of resolution , acute consciousness of beauty and healing joy.
Hirschowitz has played a significant part working with artists at the Artists’ Proof Studio and in community work along with practicing psychology.
The exhibition opens at The Thompson Gallery on 18th July 2010 at 4:30 pm. A light supper will be served.
It will be opened by the eminent psychotherapist, Trevor Lubbe.
Exhibition runs until 18th August 2010.
Please visit the photogallery for images.
Sally Thompson 0829222529
