We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Tenille Blair-Neff a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Tenille, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

Each body of creative work is the most meaningful at the time that I am working on it. Each series or solo exhibit in my life has reflected a different stage of my emotional development. My first exhibit “Menagerie of the Imago” was influenced by the Tennessee Williams play The Glass Menagerie. I was in my early twenties and having my first adult experiences. It was a time of emergence and identity formation. The art created mirrored that psychological awakening. The next series I worked on was titled “Loathsome Creatures”. It explored the period in my life after I moved to NYC, finished graduate school in Art Therapy and started my career as a full-time psychotherapist. My work as a therapist exposed me to a side of humanity that was difficult to process. The art that emerged during that time examined societal stereotypes, the American caste system, and a painful empathy that I was working to digest.
The following series “Concrete is comforting” was a visual depiction of the unraveling of my most ridged psychological defenses through the process of psychoanalysis. I started post graduate training to become a psychoanalyst, which required me to undergo an extensive personal analysis. The experience was powerful and inspiring. It helped me to become my most authentic self. The images in this body of work were raw and very close to the bone.
In “Human Bonds as Bondage” I explored the topic of ambivalence in attachment and relationships. The work reflects the profound impact of my analysis and the intentional deepening of my work with clients in my private practice. I was grappling with the contrasts that exists within the self as we relate to others in meaningful and intimate ways.
My current body of work called “Middle Age” has helped me to explore the complexities of being a middle-aged woman in our culture. Each stage of life brings its own set of joys and challenges. Art has always been an important exercise in self-reflection and personal insight for me. While creating the work for the exhibit “Middle Age”, I was grappling with the Jungian concept of holding the tension of the opposites. In which diametrically opposed choices exist within the self. As the mother of school age children, I have often found myself challenged by my need to be present for my children while also being present for myself. Sometimes it is hard to find a good balance between those things. Holding this tension also helped me to connect with my family legacy and the way my mother and grandmothers managed this same experience. The art that emerged from this emotional pondering of motherhood became a meaningful path of exploration through my past and present, helping my to make sense of my felt experience.
Making art has always been a form of insight, self-exploration, and a way to make sense of the human experience of being alive. It is a visual diary of my life, and each stage has been a meaningful part of my development personally, professionally, and creatively.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I grew up in Wichita Kansas, a moderate sized city in the Midwest. My father was a professional musician, and my mother was a Nurse Assistant who also dabbled in visual art as a hobby. My childhood environment was very encouraging of creativity and curiosity. I was a shy child who spent a great deal of time observing the natural world. At an early age, I spent long hours watching insects interact with each other. I was fascinated by their relationships with one another. I liked to puzzle out what I perceived as their feelings and create dialogues about their family structure and culture. When I reached my teen years, I was influenced by street art and skateboarding culture; music, art, and risk. I was always risk adverse outwardly but internally I had a rebellious soul that longed to push boundaries. I was drawn to the connection between fear and excitement even though I often let fear paralyze me. I developed an interest in collecting art from my peers at school and always had stacks of doodles and drawings in my desk. This interest in art pushed me to attend Northeast Magnet high school which was a school that specialized in art. Under the direction of art teacher Gordon Zahradnik, I was introduced to clay. I fell in love with ceramics and soon began creating sculptures with a passion. After graduating high school, I attended Fort Hays State University to study ceramic sculpture from artist/ Professor Linda Ganstrom. She was an amazing instructor that had a “wholehearted” approach to teaching. She helped me develop my visual language and introduced me to so many ways of making and thinking about art. While working towards my BFA in Ceramics, I noticed that creating art was helping me to process and understand my emotional experience. My art professors and friends noticed this as well and they encouraged me to investigate Art Therapy as way to integrate my interest in psychology and visual art. I was excited about Art Therapy and got accepted into a graduate program in New York. In 2001, I graduated with my BFA in Ceramics/ minor in Psychology, I got married to fellow artist Joel Neff, and we packed up and moved to New York so that I could get my Master of Science in Creative Arts Therapy. Studying art therapy had a transformative impact on my creative work. Skill and technical ability were not given as much importance as self-expression, process, free association and uncovering the unconscious. Art was viewed as a tool for healing and understanding. Viewing art this way freed me from the academic focus on skill and technique helping me to prioritize spontaneous and raw expression. What would have been viewed as “mistakes” or “errors” in a fine art setting became the tool to insight.
It is at this time in my artistic development that I began to understand that my art is a form of psychological self-portraiture. I became more flexible in my approach to creating art and started to do more mixed media works. Living in small spaces in NYC made it increasingly difficult to store ceramic sculptures and other large-scale works. This was a major influence in my transition to more experimentation in 2-D. After moving to NYC, I rediscovered my early love for street art and graffiti. Although I am a huge fan of contemporary conceptual artists like Matthew Barney, Marina Abramovic, Wolfgang Laib, Anish Kapoor, Ann Hamiliton, etc., I also felt drawn by the raw accessibility of graffiti art. I began to strive for a visceral impact in my work that would reach the viewer in an emotional space without the need for words or complex explanations. This sensibility continues to be very important to me when creating art.
After becoming a mother, I moved to Branson Missouri to be closer to my family, have a larger living space and a lower cost of living. It was a shock to the system to go from a thriving art culture to a town without any contemporary art spaces. I continued to make art as I settled into life as a mom and started my private practice in my new home. I met a group of local artists and together we started a non-profit organization, (SMAC) Southern Missouri Arts Connection. I am very proud of what we have accomplished in a short amount of time. We were able to open a community art center that provides artist studios, a classroom and a gallery that hosts 12 exhibitions per year. My involvement in this organization has been a meaningful part of my transition back to midwestern culture and has helped me find a sense of home. Having a creative community has always been vital for my growth as a person and as an artist. I am continually influenced by my work as a Psychoanalyst, Creative Arts Therapist and Professional Counselor. Being a professional psychotherapist requires me to maintain a high level of self-awareness and personal insight so that I can be most effective for my clients. Although I do not make a living as a professional artist, maintaining a consistent and active art practice is vital for all aspects of my life.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

The most rewarding aspect of being an artist is the ability to communicate in my native language. For me, visual expression is my first language and the most emotionally direct way to convey my experience. I find that art allows me to say things that would be impossible to articulate any other way. It can contain the complexities of the human experience. The paradoxes and contradictions inherent in the examined life. I am so thankful to have art to connect with myself and with others.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

I think it starts with providing meaningful art experiences throughout the life span, starting in early childhood but continuing throughout adulthood. Arts programs in schools are being cut and funds are reserves for other types of learning. This is surprising considering the multitude of research that demonstrates how valuable arts education is for developing problem-solving skills, creativity, and emotional flexibility. One of the most important effects of the arts is on overall mental health. The AJPH notes that creativity increases our control over emotional pain and depression. This is due to the self-reflection and greater understanding of oneself that often comes with making art. Similarly, PLOS found that creative activities can mold personality traits, known as “psychological resilience,” in a way that helps individuals handle outside stressors. Our society doesn’t do a good job of demonstrating the importance of art as a practice, like yoga or regular exercise, that can help us make sense of ourselves and find meaning in the human experience. Supporting arts programs that focus on the experience of making art rather then perfection or skills development as the primary goal would go a long way to help people connect with art. If society had a more personal connection to art, I think it would help the art ecosystem thrive because everyone would understand the intrinsic value of art and art making.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.psychologicalportrait.org/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yotenille/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@tenilleblair-neff5399

Image Credits
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