Interview/ Reflection 2
The essential story is Eva accepting and honoring herself. The story begins in her early years of college. Eva’s therapist learns about her struggles to successfully complete her courses and exams and her lack of interest and motivation. The therapist can witness Eva’s recollections of her fist meetings with landscapes and color, inspiring her to start to paint and draw. Eva learns that the art makes her happy, evoking emotions that have been stored and hidden for a long time. Eva discovers and describes her passion and admires her newly transformed self.
My purpose in creating the story was to share Eva’s experience of successfully realizing the problem and with the therapist’s help, overcoming her difficulties in doing so. Eva’s story shares some very similar elements with my own life story. When I was in 1st grade, I went to school for two months only, at the small village, in order to transfer to the school in the city where I lived. That was the only way for me to start first grade one year before other children my age were allowed to begin school.
In front of the school, there was a flat land covered with grass and millions of red poppies blended together into a red cover. I have never forgotten the landscape and ever since I saw it I have been making paintings of it. I have been very passionate about drawing and had been taking Life drawing classes at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. Everything else about my painting and drawing is similar to Eva's, except for one thing. I did not go to counseling and I did not have the dilemma that Eva had. I have been drawing since an early age, but I completed Medical school before I started to understand and feel a passion towards the arts. At the time when I applied for the Masters program in Counseling Psychology, I also applied for the Masters in Fine Arts. Unfortunately, Fine Arts had only 12 openings and I did not get in. I still like to draw and paint mornings in Province and make one minute drawings when visit my family in France during my vacations. I also still wish that I had more time for painting and drawing.
My intention in writing Eva’s story was to highlight her success experienced because of her courageous confrontation of her problem. She found someone who could understand her problem and who knew how to successfully lead her through this very difficult time in her life.
My audience is everyone who feels that the story could be relevant to them. I started to write the story having in mind my personal memories and experiences, but with a different beginning and outcome. The process of writing the story allowed me to take the time to go back to the small village with the flat stretches made of green and red that were so tightly related with happy moments of my childhood. Even if I had no other audience, I am certainly the one who enjoyed recollecting memories of seeing the landscapes and later drawing and painting them with passion.
I have enjoyed the process of media selection and considered the use of my original painting and drawings. But in the end, I decided to let Eva’s story be an imaginary one, with strong elements of autobiography.
Eva's passion is my second media piece and I truly enjoyed creating it due to the fact that this time I was much more familiar with the process and able to pay attention to details. I have the impression that the music that I chose could be somewhat distracting and that a soft jazz or a classical piece could have perhaps worked better. Overall, the entire process was challenging and exciting.
