Emanation in creative practice: Exploring the impact of McNiff’s construct of witnessing in an Australian setting

Abstract

Across his career Shaun McNiff wrote of the role of witnessing art makers’ processes in the context of art therapy. In 2004 he reminded his readers that offering useful interpretations conveys imagination and insight, opening the possibility of new ways to see artwork and warm it with human contact. In this article the authors consider how McNiff’s ideas about witnessing have informed their understanding of creative practice. Throughout this process an enhanced familiarity of the emergent life within the artwork is found to simultaneously foster a subjective sense of well-being and trust in call to consider the deeper ecology of creation. famously calls on art makers to dialogue with their images. In this article the authors inquire into the experience of witnessing and communicating with words and images in the development of paintings, from the alternating contexts of studio and the screen.