I wrote this 32-page research paper as an academic component of my Master of Fine Arts degree in Studio Arts (Painting) at Concordia University in Montreal. The paper was the final requirement of my independent study credit in the neuroscience of creativity and healing: I wanted to discover whether hardwiring within the human brain might interweave these two processes.

The text links my researches to my own art practice, the concurrent development of my Bog Series. As such it offers a highly personal take on brain science -- the only kind that seemed meaningful for an artist-writer to make.

How did I ever imagine that I -- a complete non-expert -- could navigate the shoals of neuroscientific theory! I read for months -- divergent theories by all kinds of experts with multiple graduate science degrees. I found many tangled strands, none of which seemed more worthy or reasoned than another, and -- more importantly -- none of which was in accord with my own intuitive hunches. I couldn't imagine how to conclusively analyze the latest neuroscience, much less write about it. And then I realized that I could write about the process of my reading and thinking, elaborating connections between the scientific method, my own creative practice, and the oral society of the bog-mummified Iron Age individuals that my art series aims to evoke. So that's what I did.

Introduction

I came to the subject of art and neuroscience -- what neurobiologist Jean-Pierre Changeux calls "physiological aesthetics" -- looking for certainty. I was seeking external support for my belief that artistic practice, by which I mean considered and sustained work with personally meaningful imagery, promotes the artist's own psychic and even physical healing. I was looking for some kind of empirical, generalized verification of my own individualized experience: I am more whole, more myself as a result of my creative work.

And so I dove into science's theories of human consciousness and their implication for the arts and was surprised to find such a wide range of agendas and points of view. As I read, I became increasingly discomfited by writers' reductionism of consciousness to brain function, at the extrapolation from animal responses in experimental settings to in vivo practice by human artists, at arguments from brain dysfunction to function. Most material did not mesh comfortably with my sense of my own experience or approach to the world. And I began to see that without the skill base or intellectual framework to evaluate expert neuroscientists' work, I was not going to be able to allocate a truth value to my readings.

And so I began to broaden my reading to include the more familiar territory of the humanities and the arts. Here, I encountered fundamental questions of hermeneutics and aesthetics. Do we respond to art differently than we do to other stimuli? If so, how? And, what does that mean about the nature of art and its transformative power? Of course, in philosophy and psychology I encountered a wide range of opinions -- some with which I share common ground.

I began to be interested in the history of theories of consciousness, wondering how our approaches reflect our attitudes to the world and our needs of it. Similarly, I began to question the nature of my inquiry: why had I needed to seek sanction for my beliefs and experience from external, scientific authorities? And consequently, I began to wonder about the epistemological and cognitive tools we use to move forward -- the various modes of knowing which we endorse.

Given that I am an artist and that my inquiry is rooted in my creative process, I must connect my investigations to my own visual work now underway: the Bog Series. sparked by northern European bog finds of the corpses of Iron Age ritual human sacrifices. And so the pages that follow represent an attempt at synthesizing diverse personal and theoretical content on bog bodies and brain science; intellectual, intuitive, and aesthetic (or body-based) understanding -- a baffling brew that I will revisit with further readings in the months to come. And as I reach out ahead of my base of knowledge, trying to give shape to my ideas, I am reminded by the words of the poet Wendell Berry:

"There are, it seems, two Muses: the Muse of Inspiration, who gives us inarticulate visions and desires, and the Muse of Realization, who returns again and again to say, "It is yet more difficult than you thought." This is the must of form. ... It may be, then, that form serves us best when it works as an obstruction to baffle us and deflect our intended course. It may be that when we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work and that when we no longer know which way to go we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings."

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