Bodies Tell Stories

“The body is both a representation and a reality, a manifestation of life, and life itself, what we are and something we have, that through which we live and in which we live: it is raw material, tool and crucible. The body has a language with which it responds to life, and is itself a language constituted by the language it carries, which speaks through us and ultimately speaks us”. Daniel Gvirtsman * 

These portraits of real people by the artist Isobel Williams highlight how each person’s way of inhabiting space is unique.

Illustrations on this page and the title page are by kind permission of Isobel Williams and can be found along with a rich archive of her drawings at isobelwilliams.blogspot.com

The innate expressivity of bodies is captured in lines and shadings that convey a particular essence of movement. Through selective emphasis, slight exaggeration or contrast we get a sense of mood and character. The lines suggest the dynamic movement which is always present in any live encounter. In the drawings we also feel the presence of the artist’s own body as her pencil or pen makes contact in a particular way with the page. 

 
Ipseity is the quintessential quality or condition of being oneself. Derived from the Latin word ipse (meaning "self"), it refers to your core identity, individual selfhood, and the unique essence that makes you distinctly you, entirely separate from external roles or labels.

Body Psychotherapy aims to allow each person’s life energy to move and express itself more freely. This is not easy or quick or straightforward as human beings learn to constrain themselves due to multiple pressures and challenges in being alive and being in the world. 

In an interview with Paul Kopecek, the sculptor Anthony Gormley said “I want to recapture areas of human experience ….very simple things – what it feels like to look out and see, what it feels like to be cold and frightened, or what it feels like to be absolutely quiet and just aware of the passage of air around your body”. In Aspects Winter 1985.

Here is an excerpt from the words written next to ‘Body XVI’ in his book Drawing, p.197 

The body as a field. 
The body is an unknown space. 
Aliveness. 
The register of a moment of lived time.
 A state of becoming. 
Being part of space and time: a dispersion. 
Unifying internal and external. 
Emotion as weather.

*p. 29 in Gvirtzman, D. (1990) ‘Bones, Self and Paradox, Part 1’ Energy and Character (Abbotsbury Publications) vol. 21, no.2, 28-45
**p.197 Drawing: Antony Gormley  (2026 Thames and Hudson)