While science is still busy trying to come up with an established truth about what goes on inside our heads, artists (not to mention philosophers, writers and neuroscientists) are free to explore the actual experience of being conscious. In the early 20th century Madrid Santiago Ramon y Cajal, often called the founder of modern neuroscience, mapped neurons in spidery ink drawings. Wassily Kandinsky meanwhile set out to paint from the unconscious mind. Liberating colour from its shackles, he used paint to try and create a language of visual abstraction akin to music.
Artists continue to use colour to explore our sensory experience of the world. Ann Veronica Janssens uses colour and light to make us question all our perceptions. For her new installation at Wellcome Collection, she fills the gallery with coloured mist. In this extraordinary environment, all ordinary details about how we see – colour, surface and depth – are altered or obscured, and we become intensely focused on the act of perception itself. Encounters like these remind us of the richness of our interaction with the world; a personal universe constructed within the confines of our skulls.
So this month’s challenge, as part of The A to Z of Reader’s Art, is to create a work of art that expresses your conscious experience. It could be inspired by philosophy, or neuroscience – or you might prefer simply to celebrate the diversity of your daily reality without seeking answers.
How to share your artwork
Share an image of your artwork via GuardianWitness, by clicking the blue “contribute” button on this page, or via the Android or iPhone app. If you have any problems, email us at userhelp@theguardian.com.
We’ll feature some of our favourite submissions on the Art and Design site. By sending us your pictures you: a) acknowledge that you have created the pictures or have permission to do so; and b) grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, free licence to publish your pictures as described. Copyright resides with you, and you may reuse your pictures however you wish. Read our full terms and conditions here.
Don’t worry if they don’t appear straight away – everything has to be approved before it can be “hung” in our online gallery. Do tell us in the comments if there are any improvements we could make to the series.
