Desdemona McCannon studied English Literature at Bristol University, followed by a further degree in Illustration at Liverpool John Moore’s University, and then a Masters in Sequential Illustration at the University of Brighton. She has worked as a freelance illustrator in the UK and Japan. Her writing on illustration has been diverse, with a commitment to exploring the intellectual force of illustration and its cultural impact. She is currently a lecturer in illustration and graphic design within the art history department at Manchester Metropolitan University.
Abstract: Describing the Unknowable – Illustration and Gnosis
Gnosis is a form of knowledge that is not concerned with what can be classified or scientifically proven. It is ‘knowledge derived from intuition rather than that from rational or reasoned thinking,’ and describes the sense that there is something beyond ordinary apprehension, that language is an inadequate tool alone. Often these experiences are ‘visionary’ or described as ‘mystical’, and there is a branch of Christianity that is called ‘Gnostic’. But gnosis is a useful word to describe experiences that are difficult to account for rationally. At its core is the belief that what is ‘unknowable’ can be approached through an experience or intimation of ‘something beyond’ what
the five human senses can apprehend. The persistence of belief in visions of ‘spirits’ through folklore and myth, and the many efforts of poets and artists over hundred’s of years to describe this experience in their creative work is interesting. It perhaps can help us understand more about the numinous beginnings of our own consciousness, and the role of images to reach after this kind of understanding.
This paper will explore ideas surrounding the notion that illustration can be used as a personal visual language to express a sense of the ‘numinous’ or divine. Jung wrote of his visual diary, ‘The Red Book’
“The years … when I pursued the inner images were the most important time of my life. Everything else is to be derived from this. It began at that time, and the later details hardly matter anymore. My entire life consisted in elaborating what had burst forth from the unconscious and flooded me like an enigmatic stream and threatened to break me. That was the stuff and material for more than only one life…. Everything later was merely the outer classification,the scientific elaboration, and the integration into life. But the numinous beginning, which contained everything, was then.”
The illustrator works with both images and words, both have different conventions for conveying meaning, and for confounding it too. It is the confounding of meaning, the fascination with ‘unknowable’ things that has led artists to create their own systems, of language or imagery, to communicate what they ‘feel’ that they know.
