The Many Faces of Anxiety

• Artist: Joseph Loughborough
• Title: 'Amongst'
• Media: Charcoal and Gold leaf on paper
• Dimensions:130/150cm
• Date: N/A
• Source: http://www.josephloughborough.co.uk/recent-work/

      Bio: "Joseph Loughborough (b. 1981) spent his formative years exploring the derelict boatyards and creeks of Portsmouth, on the south coast of the UK. After graduating from Portsmouth University he pursued interests in art, philosophy and skateboarding culture, living in London, Paris and currently Berlin."(http://www.josephloughborough.co.uk/bio/)

      Artists Statement: "Honesty, expressionism and catharsis can be read from Loughborough’s impulsive and intuitive mark making, which strive to grasp a comprehension of the human condition.
Drawing inspiration from various themes concerned with Camus/Kierkegaard's notion of ‘Absurdity’, each drawing becomes a decadent theatre of emotion, sexuality and movement. Lonely human forms seem to struggle and ponder the sporadically lit space they occupy without reaching the point of a dramatic emotional encounter. Couples and groups of people cling together searching for an antidote to the revelations of their existence.Personifications of latent hopes and emotions wait in vain to be realized. No specific conclusions can be made to the meaning of the individual works aside from the acknowledgement and indulgence of image, expression and technique. This reflects absurdity’s philosophical model of observing our potentially meaningless existence without the sterilization of Nihilism. The irony of religious motifs act to enhance the awkward balance between secularism and piousness that the characters depicted seem to grapple with (http://www.josephloughborough.co.uk/bio/)
        Techniques: Multiple Focal Points on the different faces, Unity in the amount in faces in each row but with Variety in each face being different.

This painting shows me the different faces of anxiety, every person fighting their own battle. There is no set way a person looks when they have some sort of an anxiety disorder. Many go through their normal lives and you would not know the difference. This causes people who never experienced anxiety to often criticize the validity of a person claiming to suffer from anxiety, which is usually accompanied with the over used comment of "its all in your head". Because your right it is and thats the problem.