This practice-led research report investigated my personal individuation journey in
painting. Art has, in contemporary days, become an increasingly discursive and broad
concept which contains overwhelming diversity and has a tendency to confuse not only the
audience but also the artists. As a researcher as well as an artist early in her career, I faced
similar questions as many others. How to find authenticity in art? How to become an
individual on canvas?
Inspired by Jung’s concept of individuation, the lifelong development of personality, I
created a planning and analytical tool for art, the Creative and Evaluative Model of Artistic
Individuation, or CEMAI. This tool consists of multiple axes of contradictions. I identified
different axes on CEMAI and experimented with various visual complexities in painting,
looking at Chinese (professional) and UK (liberal) art education, the interchanging identities
of child and adult, and the relationship between word and image. I tried to find my position in
all of this, a balanced zone among different contradictions. Inspired by the Naxi culture I
realised the validity and significance of the animistic point of view. This was that middle
zone, a conclusion as well as an opening of the future. Through this process, I continue to
gradually progress along the path of Jungian individuation on an authentic journey of selfrealisation.
The approach I have taken is largely autoethnographic, with my own stories and lived
experiences acting as an integral part of and often mixed in with more methodological
research.