My dissertation on emotions (as factors of change) is one of the expressions of my interest in human feelings and their importance for the development of a person and relations.
Using Composition Method in coaching and training, I invite people to move to the non-verbal level of experience, which touches the unconscious. Composition of abstract elements helps people to go beyond existing patterns of thoughts, and to come back to the world of senses. In this way one is more present and in contact with the ongoing stream of feelings.
The world becomes richer when we can feel freedom from the things we know and become open for the freshness and novelty of the next moment. This is beautifully expressed by Krishnamurti in his book "Freedom from knowledge", and also in work by Suzuki about the beginners mind. I think that abstract art can help us to create this openness which is so important for being in contact with feelings and the richness of experience.
The Dialogical Self (Hermans, 2000), understood as a landscape of the mind as a spatial phenomenon, is a very relevant model which helps to work both with emotions, positions and background awareness. Working with the Composition Method, I try to bring together wisdom derived from mystical traditions (Deikman, 1982) and science in order to stimulate the development of a person. Dialogical Self is theoretical, forming a scientific basis of my work and it is broadly described in our book
I am also inspired by the work of Mark Rothko, who invites me to move into a stream of pure sensual perception and emotion felt in a silence without words. I also follow the idea of Kandinsky, who told that moving deeply into yourself, into your inner need, makes you discover the universal.
Agnieszka giving a workshop
on Artistic Composition in Boston, USA, 2011