Interview with Colm Lavelle

Colm Lavelle is a Jesuit and lives as a hermit for six months of the year. He
 works with people using art therapy. He also runs retreats. Here he talks 
to Anne Ryan about his life and work.


Leading up to the months of solitude can be difficult. I find myself weeping at the
 prospect of the loneliness involved. I can also find myself weeping at the prospect
 of leaving my solitude. It’s not easy to stay for long periods without any company. 
Such experiences fit with the traditional teachings of the mystics, for example John
 of the Cross who maintained that there is a benefit to being wholly in the desert. I
 find I always want to get out of it. Sometimes I have a radio there but I find I am
 better off without one. I can visit neighbours, or sometimes they want to see me. 
It’s very much an experience of emptiness and searching. After all, God is 
ultimately beyond everything, so one has to let go of a great deal to live by faith 
without clinging to making an idol of this or that.

I find the first week of solitude is normally a relief. Overall I find it difficult but 
not unbearable, and I know that something very good is distilled from it. During 
my time of solitude I keep in contact with my brethren and occasionally come back 
to visit them. I also do the usual day-to-day housekeeping chores which include 
shopping, so I’m not your typical hermit devoid of human contact. Contact with
 people can bring its own difficulty as I must change my focus from ‘inner to outer’
 and vice versa. I believe that God is present throughout the universe and in the
 reality of spirit. The more closely we bond with that Presence the more it impacts 
on the world and that can only be positive. I have approximately three periods of
 meditation lasting about one hour each. I need a structure to the day, otherwise I
 can be in ‘no man’s land’ and depression is a possibility. Some people think that the 
solitude is very isolating but I have a sense of belonging, a sense of “me in Christ
 with the rest”, that I’m part of the body of Christ.

The Spiritual in Abstract Art

I became interested in art when I was in college. Having suffered from epilepsy 
which affected my memory, I needed something that wasn’t too cerebral as an 
alternative to theology. My rector encouraged me to follow my nose and take up 
painting. This I did in my early thirties. When I was in Germany studying 
catechetics I got very interested in Kandinsky, a pioneer of abstract modern art. He
 was a Russian emigre working in Munich. He wrote a couple of very interesting 
books: one was on the spiritual in art and the other was on point, line and surface.

While I had always been interested in abstract art there was a lot of prejudice from
 people I knew towards it. But when I read Kandinsky’s theories I became 
convinced that it was a totally valid form of art. Later when I came back to Ireland 
I exhibited some of my work in Cork and contributed to yearly shows.

Later I moved to Clongowes where I taught full-time. I met Sister Jo Kennedy who
 was working in the Mater Child Guidance Clinic. She put me on to Rita Simons
 who was running a short course in art therapy which I joined. Arising out of that 
I got a little group together. We used to meet monthly to do art therapy, or prayer
 and art therapy combined. From that I got an offer of part-time work in St.
Vincent’s Hospital in Fairview – about twelve hours a week – which I kept up for 
two years until I moved to a retreat house down the country.

I have always been interested in the charismatic movement and in the whole 
concept of praying in tongues which to me makes sense of my abstract art. I feel 
it is like a painting in tongues where the deepest movements of one’s insides are
 coming to expression in non-conceptual terms and so relating oneself to life and 
ultimately to the Lord.

The therapeutic side of my work showed up for me primarily in working with my
 own painting. From quite early on, shortly after I had moved to Limerick I noticed,
 especially when I worked with gouache or watercolour, that there was imagery 
coming up in the painting which was always completely unconscious (it was 
always a principle with me that I wasn’t going to programme what I was doing). I 
could see that there were a lot of embryonic or foetal and cellular shapes coming 
up. As I had no particular interest in biology or knowledge of the processes of 
early life, this really puzzled me but I felt “well, if it’s coming out, then let’s see 
what it’s all about”.

Primal Therapy

Later I became interested in Primal Therapy. I wanted to see what, if anything, was 
back there. The more I got into it the more I was convinced there was something.
 What used to come up for me, apart from the embryonic shapes, were a lot of
 ‘fence structures’ in my abstract paintings, a partly permeable barrier that you could
 see through but you couldn’t get through. Initially I thought it was to do with the 
Transcendent which was there but not quite accessible.

When I was invited to do some days in the Dublin Counselling and Therapy Centre
 and elsewhere, my interest was to see if I could provide a number of exercises
 where you could give certain instruments to people which they could use if they
 really wanted to search out their hinterground. The mystical life has a part to play
 in it too. As part of my journey I always had an interest in the contemplative life,
 particularly that of the Cistercians. Eventually, with my brethren, we agreed that I
 could spend half the year in solitude in more or less a hermetical life, which I began 
ten or twelve years ago. In the context of that, I wrote a lot of poetry with a
 fantastic amount of Primal imagery coming through. It’s extraordinary how vivid it
 is. That pull between solitude and relationship is always very strong for me. I can’t
 do without either of them.

Another theme that came up for me in the poetry more than the painting – I can’t
 seem to express it in the paint without being representational – is a “nobody wants me” feeling. In Primal Therapy the possibility emerged that I was a breach birth
 and that I might have passed out in the course of delivery.

When I’ve been in my solitary phase I find that in my prayer I get to a stage where 
I don’t know where I’m going. I’m completely blocked. I don’t seem able to pray, 
or think. From experience I find that is often a signal to take out the paints and “let 
rip” for a couple of days. Then I’m able to flow again. Maybe I’d keep that up for
 two or three weeks and then I’d want to write some poetry. I feel that the art starts 
it off, the painting lets it flow and the poetry ties it in a package.

The psychological and the prayerful overlap a lot. When I try using art as a form
 of prayer it is not done consciously. I feel, however, that it is going on just the
 same.

I remember once making a retreat and, with the rector’s approval, I spent two or 
three hours painting. First I found I got so intense and ecstatic I told the rector:
 “I’m going home, I can’t go on like this, for if I do, I’ll blow”, so I spent the rest of 
the day in the mountains. I think one has to be aware, if one has that kind of
 temperament, not to get addicted to a high because it’s so tragic when people do go 
over the top. Sometimes painting can be exhausting. At other times it can be 
euphoric. The euphoria is the dangerous time.


Being in Relationship


There was a time when I would have used a certain amount of line in art therapy 
but now my primary interest is in surfaces and colour and clay. You can work with 
clay. It can be easier to bring prayer and emotions together when working with 
line, because a line is dynamic. A surface is not dynamic. It’s relational and colour
 is likewise. It may have a feeling in it but it’s not going anywhere. I think it’s
 useful to distinguish in working with art material between using the materials for
 the sake of the process and using products. I think they have quite a different
 dynamic. You can sit in front of a painting by Rothko of great rectangular shapes
 and colour and be absorbed in it. The whole thing is very contemplative. I’m on a 
journey, it’s the doing that matters and that’s a different experience. Or, again, if 
I’m working with rough texture paint I think, as you’re applying it, and seeing the
 application, you have the feeling of stroking or relating with something. I think the 
texture is fundamentally to do with relationship. From a psychological point of 
view, if you consider texture, whether you take the hair on my head, or two people 
having sexual intercourse, there’s a penetration of one surface by another surface.
 The hair on the head goes into the air. It’s me and yet it’s the air in a sense. It’s
 both the space around it, and it at the same time; it’s both you and the space around
 you at the same time. I want to relate that to St. John, Chapter 17 where “we may 
be one as he is in the Father”.

I found, when I was working with the mentally ill, that play would have been the
 most useful work with people with schizophrenic tendencies, but I found it was the last thing you could induce them to do. Paintings by schizophrenics seem to have
 a peculiar characteristic that there is no principal of integration in their 
composition. You just don’t feel that all the parts belong together, that they’re going
 in tangential directions.

From my limited experience of schizophrenics, it seemed to me that their life was
 like that. One part doesn’t connect with another part. I thought that if you could
 get them to exercise in the smallest way towards forming relationship by 
integrating composition, that it would be a move in the right direction. Of course 
if you take schizophrenia as having a genetic base that psychotherapy isn’t quite the
 thing for them. I have always found that for people with a depressive tendency,
 their compositions tended to end up a grey mess. I could be treading on dangerous
 ground here as I’m not a trained psychologist, but I feel that it would help them
 somehow to articulate the grey mess, that they need to fragment a bit more.
 Nothing is separate. Life is in utter chaos because it has no direction.

A benefit of art therapy is to get people in touch with their own pain. It certainly
 has done that for me. With the clay and with art therapy generally what you’re
 actually doing is creating a small model of situations. It’s not threatening because 
it’s so small, and you’re not completely involved because you’re outside it, but it is
 nonetheless you. You can work towards a kind of solution in it without being 
crushed. Therefore it may not be as volcanic as normal Primal Therapy but I think
 it can have much the same kind of dynamic. It gives us a map to work towards 
some resolution.

Therapy and Play


There is the fun and play element as well, and the emotional freeing for oneself to
 be more in touch with one’s feelings. My paintings give me an indicator as to how 
things are for me. By using art therapy in agnostic terms I’m appealing to the 
dynamic life force of the individual. In Christian terms I’m trying to help them to
 articulate the spirit within them and to be more in touch with that. So that art in
 that sense can be a form of prayer. I go back to St. Paul, Chapter 8 where he talks 
about the spirit being at work in the depth of creation, groaning. I feel that the Lord 
is at work in each of us trying to bring something to fruition and that by helping
 people to unfold and to “free the traffic” you are helping to bring that to fruition.
 Whether a person would see that in religious or psychological terms would depend
 on their own background. It doesn’t necessarily interfere with the actual process.

I feel we are all too conceptualised and that we lose the sense of mystery, 
particularly in urban society. My approach to art is very much concerned with
 giving people a non-conceptual language of expression. Abstract art can do this,
 and it can also give an easier access to mystery, a sense of the transcendent. It’s
 harder to have that sense if you have not got a vocabulary in which to express it.
 These more non-representational forms of art can give you a non-conceptual
 vocabulary. In the process of coming to consciousness the concept is the end
 product, imagery and intuition are much earlier in the process, therefore you may
be closer to the original experience in using abstract form.

I’ve always had an interest in the whole concept of play. I feel that in modern
 society we’re all play-deprived, especially the clergy. Some can break through that
 successfully, but I felt that I was very play-deprived even as a child. I would
 distinguish sharply between games and play. Games are to do with winning, play 
is enjoying. There is a lot in common between prayer and play because prayer 
should ideally be about being with the Lord for the joy of it, knowing that He is
 delighted that you are there as well. I feel that play can bring people back to an
 earlier stage of life with which they may have lost touch: the fun of being who they
 are. For example, a group who are blindfolded, searching for a balloon in order to 
touch a certain wall with it, get down to a much more basic level in themselves 
which is the inner core of their being, a place from where they start. If I don’t have
 that inner contact in my life, then I’m only a shell.

Anne Ryan is a psychotherapist. She works in the Dublin Counselling and Therapy
 Centre.