World Mental Health Day 2012

 

The mental health charity, Mind, used madebysteph’s illustration to help mark World Mental Health Day 2012.

A Fish’s (vicious) Circle

The image is a surreal and slightly playful metophor pertaining to both feelings of entrapment and hope.  It bears relevance to circumstances or situations, both physical and psychological which are difficult to escape.

The boundaries of where one object becomes another within the image are almost imperceptible. It’s hard to identify where the parrots end and the raindrops begin or the end of the raindrops and the beginning of the fish. Even the tree morphs into a cloud without any real warning. Our eyes move around the image  and reach the top where the parrot is drained of its colour and morphs into raindrops, falling back to earth as fish and leading us into another loop of the cycle.

These imperceptible boundaries symbolise how difficult it can be in life to find an opportunity to introduce change. It’s sometimes harder breaking free of old routines or habbits than it is to remain in the never-ending cycle. However, the image also illustrates hope and the future. One of the parrots does escape from the loop, leaving the cycle in its full colourful glory and into the clear sky thereby freeing itself and the viewer from the Fish’s Circle.