who is mad fish?


Mad Fish is Dr Michelle Frantom - a career visual artist, educator and academic who moved into graphic design about 10 years ago. 

I've worked in the creative industries as an exhibiting and community artist, a sessional academic for Edith Cowan and Curtin universities, and for TAFE as a visual art and graphic design lecturer. 

I completed a Diploma of Concept Art with CG Spectrum focusing on digital drawing.

Decades of experience as a visual artist, researcher, educator, a quirky sense of humour and a life-long curiosity about what makes people tick inform my approach to design. 

​doctor of creative arts

I graduated from Curtin University with a PhD in art and philosophy. 

The motivation for my thesis, and my visual art practice for many years, was to formulate a 'model for consciousness' in which human and non-human existence could be reconciled. Underpinning that motivation was my belief that humans are not separate from Nature, and that in harming Nature, we ultimately harm ourselves.

My theoretical research was interdisciplinary and drew equivalences across several theoretical models: the 'Romantic sublime' in landscape painting, the Void of Eastern religion and Western philosophy, and Jung's imaginal realm of archetypal myth-motifs. The visual research was conducted at The Gap on the south coast of Western Australia.

My thesis Her Beauty and Her Terror: Portrait of an Archetypal Land is free to download from ResearchGate here 

published article


One of the directors of the CG Jung Institute of Los Angeles asked me to edit my PhD thesis into 3 or 4 articles so it could be published in their journal, "Psychological Perspectives". 

I felt a bit overwhelmed by the prospect. I hadn't written or had an article published before - but it was an opportunity I couldn't let slide. 

In 2022 my article The Beauty of Terror was published by Taylor and Francis. 

The article is basically the first part of my thesis where I explain why I felt it was necessary to journey into the 'void', and some of what happened there. 

Download the pdf here