#0034 CLAIRE RILEY - DO I MAKE YOU FEEL UNCOMFORTABLE?

Welcome to the Creative Nowhere Land Podcast. 

On this episode, we are joined by self-portrait artist and my mate Claire Riley.

As a teenager, Claire was diagnosed with M.E and later with bipolar disorder. Claire joins us to talk about her new body of work, 'Do I make you feel uncomfortable?'  Where she's exploring her own mental illness through self-portraiture. 

The project is, in her words, honest, brutal, surprising and maybe a little bit ugly, but it's also very real. And to me, it's incredibly brave. It's a project that Claire hopes can open up more conversations about mental health and hopefully help other people who may be going through something similar.

We discuss Claire's whole creative journey and all of the parts that have led her to now, within this new body of work, not only find what she's supposed to be doing with her creativity, but also find herself. 

In addition to being a practicing artist, Claire is also a marketing manager for an art gallery. Claire gets to spend her days talking about and being surrounded by art and artists, but not only that, she gets to be behind the scenes of a gallery and understand how it all works, which gives her a very unique perspective. And as a result, Claire has learned some great lessons that she kindly shares with us. 

Most important of which being, 'Don't let anyone tell you that your work isn't good enough if you believe in what you're doing, you've already won!'

The masks are off with this one, and there is definitely no sugarcoating it! 

We discussed some topics that may be uncomfortable for some people, including mental illness, medication and suicide, but that's the whole point. We have to be able to have these open and honest conversations, and that's the reason why I've got Claire on the podcast. 

You can check out the links to Claire's social media and see the project below:

Hope you enjoy this episode of The Creative Nowhere Land Podcast.

CLAIRE RILEY INSTAGRAM:  https://www.instagram.com/clairerileyfineart/

Transcript

Meet Claire And The Project

SPEAKER_01 0:05

Hello everyone and welcome to the Creative Noah Lamb Podcast. On this episode, we're joined by self-portrait artist and my mate, Claire Riley. As a teenager, Claire was diagnosed with ME and later with bipolar disorder. Claire joins us to talk about her new body of work, Do I Make You Feel Uncomfortable? Where she's exploring her own mental illness through self-portraiture. The project is, in her words, honest, brutal, surprising, and maybe a little bit ugly, but it's also very real. And to me, it's incredibly brave. It's a project that Claire hopes can open up more conversations about mental health and hopefully help other people who may be going through something similar. We discussed Claire's whole creative journey and all of the paths that have led her to now find within this new body of work not only what she's supposed to be doing with her creativity, but also herself. In addition to being a practicing artist, Claire is also a marketing manager for an art gallery. Claire gets to spend her days talking about and being surrounded by art and artists. But not only that, she gets to be behind the scenes of a gallery and understand how it all works, which gives her a very unique perspective. And as a result, Claire has learned some great lessons that she kindly shares with us. Most important of which being, don't let anyone tell you that your work isn't good enough. If you believe in what you're doing, you've already won. You can check out the links to Claire's social media and see the project while you're listening to the podcast, of course. But look, the masks are off with this one, and there is definitely no sugar coat in it. We discuss some topics that may be uncomfortable for some people, including mental illness, medication, and suicide. But that's the whole point. We have to be able to have these open and honest conversations. And that's the reason why I've got Claire on the podcast. So, let's get into it. You're welcome. That's just the easiest way to start it. Do I make you feel uncomfortable?

SPEAKER_02 2:54

I thought you were asking me a question then.

SPEAKER_01 2:57

I am asking you a question.

SPEAKER_02 2:58

You don't know.

SPEAKER_01 2:59

No, good.

SPEAKER_02 3:00

Not at the moment.

SPEAKER_01 3:01

That is the name of your current body of work.

SPEAKER_03 3:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:04

Which we're going to talk a lot about. But Clay, you're a self-portrait artist?

SPEAKER_03 3:10

Yeah, yeah, I am.

SPEAKER_01 3:11

But also, interestingly, you're a marketing manager at an art gallery.

SPEAKER_03 3:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:16

So you lead this double life. So I thought it'd be interesting to get you on, but primarily because we're mates, and also because I do really want to talk about the body of work. Do I make you feel uncomfortable?

SPEAKER_02 3:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:29

But Claire, where do we start?

SPEAKER_02 3:32

Oh well, I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 3:34

How would you describe the work that you're creating?

SPEAKER_02 3:36

At the moment, honest, maybe a bit brutal. To a lot of people who know me, quite surprising. Maybe a bit ugly. But it's just, yeah, just not what people expect of me. Because you know me, you know how I come across. I'm quite a outgoing.

SPEAKER_01 3:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:54

Loud, bubbly laugh that'll make children cry. But then in reality, on a Monday when I come alive in my studio and people realise, oh, she's not died during the week, she's back working again. And I'll post something and they're like, oh, will you just smile?

SPEAKER_01 4:08

Because that's at the root of the work that you'll create, isn't it?

Masks, Smiles, And Honest Faces

SPEAKER_02 4:11

Like it's got to the point now where I'll post something and my sister will comment every week, oh, I do wish you'd smile. Like jokingly, obviously, because that's what it all comes down to. But that people do say it. People who come into the gallery that I know, artists that I know who follow me, oh, it's really great. You can do a smiling one.

SPEAKER_01 4:29

So I guess we should explain. You described it to me as you're essentially exploring your own mental illness through these self-portraits. Because we caught them kind of missed that out. People are probably listening go, why does she not want to do a smiling one? Essentially, that's the point, isn't it? Yeah. How would you describe these self-portraits of yourself that you're doing?

SPEAKER_02 4:52

So I've got bipolar disorder. Very happy to talk about it.

SPEAKER_01 4:58

Which we'll discuss the slightly unusual origins of that.

SPEAKER_02 5:01

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:02

Back when you were 15, 16. But we'll we'll get to that. Sorry. Sorry to interrupt.

SPEAKER_02 5:06

So yeah, so I've got bipolar disorder and I've been painting and stuff forever. But it got to the point where I was, I mean, I'm sure we'll come back to this, but I'd lost my way. I didn't really know what I was doing, didn't have any direction. And I we went on a holiday and I decided to start journaling. But through the journaling, I just thought, oh do you know, I might just because I always loved drawing and I loved life drawing. And I hadn't done it for ages. So I thought, oh fuck it, okay, I might just do a self-portrait and see how that goes. So I started doing them. And that's when like the comments came, because I'm not gonna sit and do a self-portrait of myself grinning inanely at a mirror, because that's just weird, isn't it? So they were just like me, just got a bit of a resting bitch face, so that's what it was. And then the comments started coming, oh, that's not your usual smiley face. And I started thinking to myself, oh, okay, this is quite interesting that I'm putting a face out there that people don't recognise. It's still me, but it's not the side of me that they recognise.

SPEAKER_01 6:05

Well, we've spoken on the podcast previously now how we all sometimes have to wear certain masks.

SPEAKER_02 6:09

Oh, massively, yeah, completely.

SPEAKER_01 6:11

I've got mine on professional lives, and yeah, it's for example on the podcast.

SPEAKER_02 6:15

Of course. But it's it's the whole thing of growing up with this illness and like you know, everybody around.

SPEAKER_01 6:22

Should we should we backtrack? Come on, come on, you do you do the this is your life moment, which I'm showing my age there just by that reference.

SPEAKER_02 6:28

Alright, I got it, I got it.

SPEAKER_01 6:30

So school was normal for you.

SPEAKER_02 6:32

I got bullied to fuck, but who doesn't stand?

SPEAKER_01 6:35

We grew up in a time that was a probably a bit different to be a bit tougher. A little bit. But you got glandular fever, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:44

I know it's weird. I will I'll say this in a minute, but I think that's a starting point. So I got glandular fever when I was in year 10 and I got really ill. I was off school for ages, missed loads of school in years 10 and 11, and it just knocked me out. And after that I got diagnosed with ME. So like I would just sleep forever. Like I managed to do like GCSEs and everything, and I got into doing A levels and stuff, but I missed probably about a third of my GCSE years.

SPEAKER_01 7:12

And that must be really tough as a teenager.

SPEAKER_02 7:15

Yeah, it was shit.

SPEAKER_01 7:16

The social aspect missing all that as well.

SPEAKER_02 7:19

And yeah, I mean, I wasn't the most confident of person, so missing that time that didn't help. Nah, wiped me out completely. Like the only things I'd get out, mum always jokes, the only things I'd get out of bed for was to listen to the football.

SPEAKER_01 7:30

Really?

SPEAKER_02 7:30

Yeah, that's why United are so important to me because they'll help me through a lot of really bad times. So, yeah, so I got ME after like glandular fever.

SPEAKER_01 7:38

In my naivety, how does glandular fever lead to M?

Diagnosis, ME, And Early Depression

SPEAKER_02 7:41

They're quite it's quite common. Is it? Yeah, I mean they call it chronic fatigue now, it's not really known as ME so much, but it's just because it completely wipes out your immune system and just you just get knackered. So I was just constantly exhausted. And then through my A-level years, it just got to the point where I was just really depressed and just didn't want to get up, do anything, just hated everything. And I had a really good GP. I think a lot of GPs, when you're faced with a 17-year-old who's really depressed and is quite ill, they probably wouldn't go, right? Look, come on, let's get you on some medication. But she did, to be fair. And so I started on medication when I was like 17.

SPEAKER_01 8:21

And did that help?

SPEAKER_02 8:22

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:24

And did that allow you to in some ways start catching up?

SPEAKER_02 8:29

Yeah, probably. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:31

Did you feel like you were behind socially, academically?

SPEAKER_02 8:35

Yeah, completely. Simply just because of Yeah, like you know, it'd come to the weekend and my mates would be like, Oh, I'm going out, and I'm just like, I'm literally dead. I'm gonna go and sleep. And I, you know, in a massively knock my confidence and everything. So I was just a bit I was just that crazy girl.

SPEAKER_01 8:51

But to outsiders, you were that crazy girl, wasn't it? Probably how you feel about yourself.

SPEAKER_02 8:56

Both.

SPEAKER_01 8:56

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 8:57

Both. I felt very different to everybody else. We have a bit of a joke that my friendship group from school, there was something in the water.

SPEAKER_01 9:05

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 9:06

So we were all a bit fucking crazy. But I was probably was one of the worst ones. And we're all still we're all still really close, and we're all still a bit crazy. But there was something in the water around us a lot, so we were a bit different. But I felt very different to everybody else. Like my mates would be going out and stuff, and I just wouldn't.

SPEAKER_01 9:24

So what were you doing with your time? Is this where you were doing nothing? Just sleeping.

SPEAKER_02 9:30

Yeah. Yeah, and doing school work, obviously. But during my A-level years, art was just like it was a bit of a saviour.

SPEAKER_01 9:38

So what do you mean it was a saviour?

SPEAKER_02 9:40

So my school was ace. It's really funny, people always take the piss. They think I'm dead posh because I went to a school that had a moat.

SPEAKER_01 9:48

A moat?

SPEAKER_02 9:48

It's just a normal comp. Theresa May went there, but we won't talk about that. It's just a normal comp. But it's on the site of an old castle where Oliver Cromwell ran his Civil War campaign from. And so there's a moat. And so the how the building that was the art department was this fabulous Georgian mansion.

SPEAKER_01 10:08

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_02 10:09

Which was amazing. So whenever I had a free period, I'd go down there and I'd be doing my artwork. So that was a bit of a saviour. And I'd be doing like live drawing classes and stuff after school. Because we were allowed like naked people in school, you wouldn't be able to do it now, but we were, it was amazing. And so it was a bit of a saving. You could walk past the stable block and the deer house.

SPEAKER_01 10:33

Okay. Well, that sounds like a normal, comprehensive school.

SPEAKER_02 10:36

Yeah, it was quite amusing when you'd get the the local travellers would come up and wash their dogs in the moat. That was always good fun.

SPEAKER_01 10:43

I have got the weirdest picture of your school growing up now. But you told me that art was always something that you wanted to do. Yeah, yeah. Hence why after A level you geared foundation.

SPEAKER_03 10:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:55

But you went to university.

SPEAKER_02 10:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:57

And what did you study, Claire? Textiles. Why did you study textiles?

SPEAKER_02 11:02

So I did my foundation course and it was brilliant. It was such a good year. And you focus on all different things. So in the first term, you'll be doing one day of graphics, one day of textiles, one day of fine art, one day of photography. So you do everything and then you narrow it down. I just love textiles. I'm a bit of a colour freak and it was just so cool. I could just do anything I wanted. I could just be messy. Just and it's not like textiles like you'd think, it's not clothing.

SPEAKER_01 11:25

Right.

SPEAKER_02 11:26

It's just more, I don't know, surface pattern design. It's just art, just not using paint necessarily, it's using anything else. So textiles is quite a broad term.

SPEAKER_01 11:37

Because it was called multimedia textiles and you studied at Loughborough.

SPEAKER_02 11:43

Yeah. That just means you can do anything the fuck you want.

SPEAKER_01 11:46

Okay. So what were you doing?

University, Paranoia, And Medication

SPEAKER_02 11:48

I mean, it wasn't massively exciting because through uni I was still really unwell and struggling with everything. And I don't think I took exactly the right path, but as you always say, we always end up where we're supposed to be. So I was doing a lot of stuff based on the patterns of tartan and lace, creating my own fabrics and yeah. Well, I think back, I don't know how I had the patience cutting out my own lace and creating my own tartans and stuff. So it was quite cool.

SPEAKER_01 12:15

It's still difficult though, managing that alongside your mental health and still feeling.

SPEAKER_02 12:20

Yeah, because at that period I was suffering from like massive amounts of paranoia. Like I'd be living in my house with my housemates, and I'd suddenly for a week I'd be convinced that none of them wanted to talk to me, none of them wanted to be with me. And paranoia is so strange, you can't recognise it when you're in it. You're just convinced. And I this used to happen to me at school as well before I got unwell, so that's a bit of a sign. But I would just go through periods when I was just like, I'd be convinced no one wanted to talk to me, no one wanted to live with me, no one wanted to be with me.

SPEAKER_01 12:51

Was it difficult making that transition from probably the stuff that you're a bit more used to, school, A level, into the semi-adulthood of being university students?

SPEAKER_02 13:02

Transitions for me in my life have always been quite a big trigger of an episode. So earlier on, I always suffered more from like the depressive side of it all. So a change would make me just very depressed because it's a shock to your system, isn't it? I think things changing. So I would just go through periods like massive depression and paranoia. Now, as I've got older, a change will trigger more of a manic kind of episode. I don't get properly manic, I've never been properly manic. I get what they call hypermanic, which is not quite as bad as it could be. Okay. But you can fluctuate between the two. And with all these periods, paranoia, depression, mania, when you're in it, you can't see it. When you come out of it, you're like, oh for fuck's sake, that's what that fucking was. But you literally cannot see it.

SPEAKER_01 13:48

Just sounds like it must have been pretty tough, even to just get through the three years of university and all the pressures that come with that.

SPEAKER_02 13:55

And I was on medication the whole time, but I was on medication's very different now. Like I was on medication that had horrible side effects and messed you up in other ways. So it was a lot to deal with, but just get on with it, don't you?

SPEAKER_01 14:12

Well, do you feel that that's built resilience though? Yeah, probably.

SPEAKER_02 14:16

Yeah, probably.

SPEAKER_01 14:18

Despite these hurdles or challenges with your mental health, we're still doing it.

SPEAKER_02 14:23

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm still here. I think that's the biggest achievement.

SPEAKER_01 14:26

Doing the thing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:27

Yeah. Doing the thing.

SPEAKER_01 14:29

So when you leave university, is it the next move you're going to be the next big textile designer? I'm really sorry. I don't know anything about textile design.

SPEAKER_02 14:37

No, I didn't want to do it. I had enough of it. And so my sister lived in Birmingham. I moved to Birmingham with my then boyfriend to find a job. And yeah, that was I mean it's a bit of a limbo period, isn't it? When you like leave uni. It's okay, how am I gonna do this? What am I supposed to do?

SPEAKER_01 14:55

Yeah, it's that offboarding thing of a lot of the time, especially in arts, they never teach you how to do it as a career.

SPEAKER_02 15:00

Exactly. I mean, I freelanced a little bit for a while with a design house in London, but I didn't want to do that.

SPEAKER_01 15:06

So I thought Were you looking for creative jobs or yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely.

SPEAKER_02 15:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:11

But then did it get to a point where you're like, hmm.

SPEAKER_02 15:14

So I yeah, I tempt for a bit, and then I I mean I did find a job that was creative. I was like the art technician in the school. So I'd help out in art lessons and used to do all the dark room stuff. So I was still doing really creative stuff, it just wasn't necessarily my own stuff, and I was doing little bits and bobs of my own stuff, but when you're living in like a shared house or a tiny flat.

SPEAKER_01 15:34

You sort of glossed over the fact that you're an art technician there because that lasted for 18 years.

SPEAKER_02 15:39

Well, no, because I wasn't an art technician for 18 years, so I was in the same school for 18 years, but I moved from being an art technician to at the end, I was doing like all the graphics, the design, all the publications, building all the websites, looking after all the websites, doing all the photography. I was doing work with external clients to get money for the school, so I built it up a bit.

SPEAKER_01 16:01

Were you thinking at this point? Because you said you were creating in the background, but how much art were you creating?

SPEAKER_02 16:08

Not a lot, because I didn't really have a direction. I didn't really know what I was doing. So yeah, I'd just do little bits and bobs, maybe like fits and starts of stuff, but nothing that I've still got.

SPEAKER_01 16:19

And over that 18 years, presumably did you find some sort of routines and patterns? How's that bearing in mind the change is difficult? Did the patterns and routine of being in the same school for 18 years help with your mental health?

SPEAKER_02 16:33

I mean, schools are a crazy place to work. And wherever you work, you're gonna work with some people who make things difficult. But I mean, it was really close to home, the hours were really good. I could do stuff outside of it. I worked, you know, I had a really great friendship group that I worked with, so it was like going to work with your friends. But I don't know, I just think throughout the whole period I was just a bit scared to try. And I think I got that job when I was what, 22, 23? That's really young.

SPEAKER_03 17:04

Yeah.

Post-Uni Drift And School Job

SPEAKER_02 17:05

To try and work out what you want to do. I think at that point I was just kind of like, Well, I've got to make some money, and this is vaguely creative, that's quite cool. So I was just you just get on, don't you?

SPEAKER_01 17:15

Did you say you maybe got a bit stuck in the routines?

SPEAKER_02 17:18

Yeah, yeah, and it I did, and I was just scared to try, like scared to try and just be an artist. Yeah, but also to possibly leave and I don't know, get a graphic design job or something. I was just a bit like, I can't do that. I just completely doubted myself. And so I probably got comfortable for a bloody long time. A really long time.

SPEAKER_01 17:37

About 18 years worth of time, maybe.

SPEAKER_02 17:39

It's a lot of comfortableness, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 17:41

So what happens? I'm guessing we spoke a little bit about when COVID came, it allowed you a bit more time and you were doing fun little projects and drawing people's houses and stuff.

SPEAKER_02 17:52

Yeah, so COVID in a school is the most fucked up thing you'll ever know. The day that we went into lockdown, we had an assembly with the year 11s who were forced to leave early, they weren't ready to go, everybody was crying. It was horrendous. But I wasn't furloughed, so I had to take my computer home and I was still working from home and stuff, but obviously it did allow me some more time. And I think I started, I was like, Well, I can't go to the pub, I'm gonna draw it. And then people started saying, Will you draw my house? I was like, Yeah, okay. So, you know, I'd go around and have a social distance chat with them on their doorstep, take a photograph, and then I'd draw the house.

SPEAKER_01 18:29

And what you were just posting this on social media or something at the time?

SPEAKER_02 18:32

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was just posting stuff on Facebook, and people were getting in touch. I mean, I had some very strange requests, like one bloke was like, Would you come to my house and draw my house in the nude? No.

SPEAKER_01 18:42

Who would be in the nude? Me. Oh, yeah. Right, okay, sorry.

SPEAKER_02 18:46

So why would you even why would you even ask that?

SPEAKER_01 18:48

Yeah, that's not quite on the brief.

SPEAKER_02 18:51

But yeah, you get a few odd ones, don't you? So yeah, that just like and that year, it must have been either 2020 or 21, was huge. I sold about 10 grams worth of 95 pound drawings.

SPEAKER_01 19:03

So from someone that didn't have the confidence in your art, what are you suddenly feeling after selling 10 grams worth of art?

SPEAKER_02 19:11

I was just like, oh fuck yeah, maybe I can do this. And then on the back of that, I spoke to my boss and I was like, Can I change my hours? So I changed my hours so that I still did a full working week, but I did it in four days. So I had Wednesdays off. And then we moved house and I got my loft studio.

SPEAKER_01 19:30

And so that obviously opened me up facilities.

SPEAKER_02 19:32

So I had this day a week, and I had this space where I had all my stuff. I didn't have to put it away. It could be as messy as I wanted.

SPEAKER_01 19:40

See, there's no barrier to entry, is there? Exactly. Because everything's there.

SPEAKER_02 19:44

Yeah, exactly. So I just got that loft ladder and I'm in my space, like no one else goes in that space, and I get quite cross if they do, because they just mess everything up.

SPEAKER_01 19:53

There's a particular order to the case.

SPEAKER_02 19:55

Yeah, absolutely. Okay, and yeah, and and then I started doing some more like abstract work. I love colour, so I was just like playing around with colour and stuff, and then I started getting some commissions for those. So I did some massive commissions for people.

SPEAKER_01 20:10

Was it sort of like a snowball effect off the back of the drawings of the pubs and the social media, I guess?

SPEAKER_02 20:16

Yeah, completely. Social media was amazing. And so I yeah, I'd do something and I'd post it, and then somebody would be like, Oh, I kind of like something for my house. Would you come around and have a chat? I think was it one of the first massive ones? It was this woman who'd got this fabulous new extension at the back, and she wanted two paintings, and they were massive, like one of the I think it was about like two metres by one and a half. Wow. The other one was about like two and a half by one, so they were huge, and she wanted them to echo each other. And despite having this fabulous loft studio, I stretched the canvas, but I couldn't get them up the loft ladder, so I had to do them in the garden.

SPEAKER_01 20:51

I was gonna say that's a bit big for a loft.

Covid Commissions And Confidence

SPEAKER_02 20:53

Yeah. So that was in one of the summers. I did them in the garden, and then I got some more commissions. I did an absolutely massive one for another lady, which was very cool. I have got a cautionary tale, so I drew the front and back of a lady's house who'd had this fabulous Georgian-esque house built to fit in with the houses around hers, and it was beautiful. So we did the I did the normal pen and ink drawings of the front and the back of her house, and then she was, oh, I'd like some art for the inside, please. So yeah, went round, kids running around, and she showed me these artworks that she had that she liked, and she was like, Okay, something, you know, these are really heavily textured, I really like the texture, I really like lots of colour. Can you do something like this? I was like, Yeah, okay. So we're thinking lots of colour, lots of texture. You put it down on a plan and you send them a proposal, and they say, Yeah, that sounds good. So I did this massive painting that I think it's two meters square, finished it, right? And she was like, That's not why I wanted it to look exactly like this artwork that I've already got. And I was like, So the proposal, she's like, Yes, but I wanted it to look like this. So she wanted me to completely rip. Off somebody else's work.

SPEAKER_01 22:01

Oh, I see.

SPEAKER_02 22:02

And I was just a bit like What's the lesson in there? I don't work with Bell Ends. I don't know. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 22:10

Fair enough.

SPEAKER_02 22:11

I mean, it's all happy because it's on my living room wall. It looks ace.

SPEAKER_01 22:14

But I was all that ends well. It does.

SPEAKER_02 22:17

But I had to have the whole conversation about no, I'm not going to copy someone else's work. That's soul-destroying.

SPEAKER_01 22:24

Interesting for a commission to want someone to just copy something else.

SPEAKER_02 22:26

I know. Astonishing. Astonishing.

SPEAKER_01 22:30

So in this time, your confidence is growing as an artist. You're selling it sounds like a variety of different types of work to the drawings to the abstract stuff.

SPEAKER_03 22:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:38

Still working in the school.

SPEAKER_03 22:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:41

But we discussed that you started to see lots of changes in the education sector about the perhaps the emphasis that they were putting on arts and creativeness.

SPEAKER_02 22:49

Oh god, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:50

Which might have been one of the things that maybe led you to think about getting out.

SPEAKER_02 22:55

Over the years, what you see in schools, you know, with different governments, with different education ministers, just the peaks and troughs of what they go through and what they want and what they deem as important. Every week there'd be a new acronym for something that you're supposed to be doing. You've got to integrate throughout everything. And particularly during COVID, we all know how important art can be to kids to express themselves. And that's a pretty hard period to go through, like when you can't leave your house. And there's just people don't bloody learn. They don't learn how important it is and they don't put enough emphasis on it. So, you know, in my time at that school, I'd seen fabulous 40-year-old art classrooms demolished to make a media arts suite soulless with computers in, like throwing away so much equipment, kilns, all sorts of stuff goes out the window because they want to tick this latest government box of always supposed to be a media specialist school. So something goes out the window and it's fine art.

SPEAKER_01 23:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:53

I've seen dark rooms getting demolished and put back in a few years later.

SPEAKER_01 23:58

Yeah, resurgence.

SPEAKER_02 23:59

And it's still, you know, you just see so much money being wasted, so much time being wasted.

SPEAKER_01 24:04

And was there more of an emphasis, say, on what's the acronym? Is it the STEM?

SPEAKER_02 24:09

As that's the current one, but there have been a million iterations of different things.

SPEAKER_01 24:13

But it always seems to be the classic fine art, the traditional art sections of the school suffers.

SPEAKER_02 24:19

Arts always suffers. Art, drama, yeah, always. They're always the ones to suffer. But then they're the ones that schools always expect to be the showcase. Come and see our play. Come and see our exhibition. How do you expect that to happen if you're not putting enough into it?

SPEAKER_01 24:34

Yeah, that's interesting.

Big Abstracts, Clients, And Boundaries

SPEAKER_02 24:36

I never taught and never wanted to teach because no, just couldn't do that. But just the amount that teachers have to do now, paperwork. I know people who started at the same time as me in that school. They're still there, they're still teaching art, and I don't know how they're doing it because all of the data, all of the tracking, all of the paperwork just completely removes the time you've got to be the creative person who's trying to inspire these kids. And it's really depressing because then you just see schemes of work being recycled year after year, nothing is changed. The kids do the same project where it's really prescribed, everything's given to them, and it's just you never walk into a class and the kids are all just sitting around a still life drawing it because there are certain hoops you've got to jump through that people who don't know anything about how to teach art have told you've got to do. And so it is really soul destroying and upsetting. You still get some kids who do amazingly, and the teachers are incredible, but they're not allowed to do it properly, and it's just so fucking incredibly annoying and angering it is to watch it happen.

SPEAKER_01 25:42

Yeah, and I can tell you're passionate about it. But did that lead to this want to get out potentially?

SPEAKER_02 25:50

Yeah, I just I I'd done my time, people had started to leave, it wasn't what it used to be. There was the we're gonna make this school join the dreaded trust of a million other different schools, so we're just gonna morph and be like one of those other schools. So I was like, nah. The school I was at was really special. It was a brilliant school, but then leadership changed, and I was just like, nah, this is not what it should be. This is not what this place is. I want to leave before it gets really bad. And so I saw a job outlet.

SPEAKER_01 26:23

And this is where we move into marketing, yeah. Marketing manager for an art gallery, which almost seems like after the COVID and the building of the conference to go, oh, I can actually maybe do this. Yeah. Well, you can actually do this over£10,000 worth of art. So you can clearly do it, but this seemed like a just a natural step, right?

SPEAKER_02 26:46

Yeah, totally. It was four days a week, it was working in a freaking art gallery. The people who interviewed me, my prospective boss was phenomenal. I'll tell you about her, but she's amazing, and the people were awesome, and I was just like, holy fuck, this is crazy. And I was just like, Yeah, thank you. And you know, when you go to an interview and you're just like, I fucking nailed that. I knew it. And it was, but then it was just crazy. Like I got the message later in the day to say I'd got it, and I I just went into the kitchen to Nick and I went, got it. And it was just like, fucking hell, you're escaping. Like after 18 years, that's quite good.

SPEAKER_01 27:21

Was that a relief?

SPEAKER_02 27:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:22

But did you have any trepidation about again a change? Bearing in mind how you said a change sometimes is a stimulus.

SPEAKER_02 27:30

But I never recognise it. You'd think I'd know by now, but I didn't think to myself, okay, I'm gonna be changing jobs. This is gonna be big after 18 years. I need to look after myself. I never recognised that in the like building up to it.

SPEAKER_01 27:43

So, did anything happen?

SPEAKER_02 27:45

I think I went through a bit of a hypermanic stage a little bit afterwards. You can confuse it quite easily with thinking that I was just being really good at my job and going out and making connections and being a million miles an hour. But actually, I was a bit over.

SPEAKER_01 28:00

And is that the benefit of hindsight?

SPEAKER_02 28:02

Yeah, totally. Oh, completely. But it yeah, whenever there's a big change, that'll happen. You won't understand this, but it's like PMT for a woman. So you'll just be like rumbling along, normal stuff, and then you're just like, Oh, why do I want to like rip everybody's heads off? And it's like, oh, this is I don't know why I'm feeling like this, and then a few days later it'll be like, oh, that's why this happens every fucking month, and I still don't see it coming. So it's like that, right? It's weird, but you don't see it coming. I don't see it coming anyway.

Arts Education Under Pressure

SPEAKER_01 28:34

I might put you up like a PMT. No, not at all. PMT is a natural, a natural progression for this podcast. Um, what does your role as a marketing manager at an art gallery look like? I know that's probably gonna sound like quite an obvious question, but for listeners, what sort of thing are you doing?

SPEAKER_02 28:51

What's a daily Well, we're quite a unique little little get up. So we're really, really old, the society that I work for, but we're a very small team. So there's five of us. Wow. Yeah. So we're open five days a week. I do four. So we're a very small team, so there's a lot of like pitching in. I've always done that.

SPEAKER_01 29:14

You pitch in your help and stuff, but yeah, it's a like quite a dream job.

SPEAKER_02 29:19

Oh, yeah, it's really cool.

SPEAKER_01 29:22

Like you say, work in an art gallery.

SPEAKER_02 29:24

It's very cool. It's very cool. Like I go into work every day and I'm surrounded by artwork. That's pretty ace. And then my job is just to like shout about it and tell everybody and say, come and see it. That's quite cool.

SPEAKER_01 29:35

That's fun.

SPEAKER_02 29:36

Yeah. It is fun.

SPEAKER_01 29:38

But in your own work, it sounded like you were producing all sorts of different stuff, and you almost mentioned that you felt a bit directionless with it all.

SPEAKER_02 29:47

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:48

How did working in the gallery? Because I think there's some interesting stuff that perhaps our listeners can really benefit from. How is an artist suddenly working in a gallery? What sort of things are you learning that you're taking into potentially being the artist? Like, and was it helping you find this direction a little bit?

SPEAKER_02 30:07

Yeah, I've learned so much just through experience of seeing stuff. So we run a lot of exhibitions where people can apply to the exhibition, and it's called an open call. So you'll apply, you'll submit your work digitally, it'll be judged by a panel of judges, and then you'll either get selected or you won't. So I've over the years I've seen countless of these, so I know how that process goes. We're associated with 200 artists, and then there's all the artists who show with us. So it's a huge community, all sorts of work, every different type of artwork you can imagine. I've just learnt loads. I've learned.

SPEAKER_01 30:44

Yeah, can we sort of pick your brain a little bit? As an artist getting behind the scenes at a gallery, you have got a unique perspective.

SPEAKER_02 30:52

Yeah. And it opened up a side to the art world that I didn't know about. Everybody knows about the RA summer show. You go to the RA in the summer, and every single room is floor-to-ceiling artwork. So everyone knows about that one. But I didn't know about the hundreds and thousands that there are constantly. And that's what this job taught me. So I realized, okay, there's that outlet. I can submit my work to these things, and I might get it exhibited in a gallery in anywhere, London, Manchester, anywhere, all over the world. So I learnt that. I've started to learn if you want to get on a little bit and get recognized, you've got to have a direction, and you've got to be, it's hard to explain. So people can become like part of our society. And to do that, you've got to have a like a developed practice. All this talk about your artistic practice. And I would say that when I started at the gallery, I didn't really have one. I painted, I drew, and I had these little pockets of work. So the buildings, drawings, the abstracts, I'd do the occasional self-portrait. I'd go up to the loft, I'd be like, oh, what am I going to do today? Don't really know. If I didn't have anything I was working on, I didn't know what to start working on. And then through this holiday, through this journaling, and through this kind of accidentally stumbling upon these self-portraits and people's reaction to them, I suddenly started thinking, okay, this could be a project. I don't just have to stop at one self-portrait or two, I can just relentlessly do self-portraits.

SPEAKER_01 32:25

Is that what you mean by the things you're learning from the gallery in terms of style, body of work?

SPEAKER_02 32:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:32

Like you said, when you talk about artistic practice, you're It's effectively your style.

SPEAKER_02 32:37

It's just a fancy word for it.

SPEAKER_01 32:39

But do you think because you're working in so many different mediums?

SPEAKER_02 32:43

Like maybe I had numerous styles, but I wasn't massively committed to any of them.

SPEAKER_01 32:48

Right.

SPEAKER_02 32:49

I didn't feel like I was doing what I should be doing.

SPEAKER_01 32:52

So you had the skills, but like you say, you didn't have the direction for that.

SPEAKER_02 32:56

Yeah, completely.

SPEAKER_01 32:57

I see. So then we get to the journaling that starts exploring some of the stuff around your mental health.

SPEAKER_02 33:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:03

Had you ever done any work before about you, your mental health?

Leaving School For A Gallery

SPEAKER_02 33:08

No, I've always been really open about it. As I've got older, I'm just kind of like, fucking hell, like I just don't care. If it can help people, I'm gonna talk about it. It's just fucking normal. Like I've always said, if you can fix it with medication, that means it's a chemical imbalance, which is no different to something like diabetes. Right. So I've always just said it's just a chemical imbalance, just because it affects like my mood, don't be weird about it. I'm not gonna be weird about it. So I've always been really open about it. And I was in the school, I was always like, if anybody ever has any, come and chat to me. I'll be really open about it.

SPEAKER_01 33:43

And have you always been on the medication?

SPEAKER_02 33:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:46

Of some sort.

SPEAKER_02 33:46

Since I was 17. There's been a lot of changes. And there's something that we'll come back to in a little bit when we'll talk about medication. But so I've always been so open about it. And then as you get older, you just think I can't be bothered. And you know what it's like when you have that mask on, it's like this is exhausting. I'd like to show what I'm like the rest of the time and just not have to pretend for a little bit. And so to be able to be completely honest through the artwork that I'm making, it's just oh, it's like there's a weight off.

SPEAKER_01 34:17

Cathartic and relieving.

SPEAKER_02 34:18

Massively, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. But people have always said, if I'd say, Oh, yeah, I've I've got depression or I've got bipolar, they'd be like, Oh, but you're so bubbly.

SPEAKER_01 34:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:29

It's like I'm a really fucking good actress. Really good actress.

SPEAKER_01 34:34

You're one of these people I think that we don't want to burden people.

SPEAKER_02 34:38

Yeah. People say, How are you, but they don't actually mean it.

SPEAKER_01 34:41

No, of course they don't. Yeah. Yeah, they don't mean if you want the real answer, people want the fluff answer because we're all just too wrapped up in our own.

SPEAKER_02 34:49

So I got fantastic at just saying, Yeah, I'm fine, I'm okay.

SPEAKER_01 34:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:52

And that'd be it.

SPEAKER_01 34:53

And FINE, my mum and my grandmother used to say, FINE is an acronym for fucked up, insecure, and erotic and emotional. So yeah, I'm Oh, I fucking love that.

SPEAKER_02 35:01

Put on a t-shirt.

SPEAKER_01 35:02

There you go. Yeah, it probably is on a t-shirt somewhere already. Okay, so have you got any more things that you've learned as a marketing manager within an art gallery that artists? What about marketing yourself as an artist? What can you give our listeners about?

SPEAKER_02 35:18

Oh, do you know what? Like, I do it for other people every day, but it's very difficult to do it for yourself. There's so much of this with social media, there's so much pressure. I know this through work, and through work I do it. Like, you post every day, you do different stuff all the time, blah blah blah, all of that. But for myself, it's really hard because my painting day is a Monday, I'll go to the loft on Monday and I'll just crack on. They'll be like, fuck, I've forgotten to film it, or I've forgotten to take photographs, I've got no progress photographs. I'm shit at making content for myself. It's really fucking difficult. Because as an artist, you just want to be doing the thing, don't you? But then you've got to punctuate it by going, okay, I've got to just quickly do this. And then there's all the other shit that goes along with it, tax returns and keeping all your records and all that. So it's really hard. It's not easy.

SPEAKER_01 36:06

But you've just got to have you got one little nugget though that might help people.

SPEAKER_02 36:10

People love seeing you doing it. I mean, I could sit and watch other people paint for hours, and I'm not alone in that. People just love seeing you making what you're making, the progress of something, and like how it starts. But don't like sugarcoat stuff. Don't put yourself out there as being this big, shiny, fabulous, yeah, I'm an artist. Be honest about it. It's not fucking easy, and build a community, which is what you're trying to do. Build a community of people. I've met so many amazing people, and because of where I work, I have conversations like this every day. Somebody came into the gallery last week, and we sat, he's another creative, we sat for like an hour and a half just talking about it. So you just have these conversations all the time, but you've got to be honest. This is where I'm gonna get a bit controversial. So a lot of the artists I work with are they've come to it later in life, so they've had a career completely unrelated, and they come to it later in life. And there's not an enormous amount of humility because there's this constant need to prove that you know what you're doing. It's like, okay, I haven't had the artistic education, but I've read all of this and I've seen all these shows, and so they're just trying to prove something a lot of the time. So this is why I say you've got to be honest, you've got to be humble, don't become arrogant, and don't talk down to other people about their work.

Inside A Gallery: What Artists Miss

SPEAKER_01 37:38

I think it goes back to what you didn't say earlier, you don't want to work with Bellens.

SPEAKER_02 37:42

Yes, completely.

SPEAKER_01 37:43

A different context, but completely the same.

SPEAKER_02 37:45

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 37:46

Do you think there is some sort of weird persona that artists think they have to put on?

SPEAKER_02 37:51

Yeah, definitely. Definitely. But we're just like we're not some kind of weird freak show. We're just normal people like anybody else. It's just that we're creative, and yeah, okay, maybe some of us are a bit more emotional and stuff like that, but you're just a normal person like anybody else.

SPEAKER_01 38:08

Yeah, and I imagine working with so many different types of artists that you do, yeah. You get to see that whole spectrum.

SPEAKER_02 38:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:15

Do you notice the difference between the artists that have had that arts education compared to the ones that haven't?

SPEAKER_02 38:22

So when I talk about arts education, I'm not saying that you have to have gone to college, gone to art school, but it's just it's more about a journey where you're just you keep listening and you are open to learning. That continues. Having those conversations constantly, but not approaching them from the I'm gonna tell you. It's like this is a conversation, it's a dialogue. So I'm not saying that you have to have been to university, you've just got to be prepared to have those conversations, those honest conversations. It's like crit groups. Yeah, that's so important. And yeah, fair enough. Some crit groups at uni are absolutely brutal. And I'm not saying that's what you should be doing, but you've got to have, you've got to allow your work to be discussed. You can't just present it and say, Yeah, this is fucking brilliant. Look at look at what I've done. Isn't it amazing? You've got to be open to those conversations, and that's what an arts education is, just being open to that conversation. Because as soon as you, as soon as you stop, I see it, the work stagnates. It's not interesting, it's not good. I know you don't like me talking about good and bad art, but it's not good. And it's just sad. Like as soon as you become you lose that humility, you lose that willingness to let people talk about your art and ask you questions about it.

SPEAKER_01 39:42

Well, if you think you're always right and the way you paint or the way you create is always right.

SPEAKER_02 39:47

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 39:48

There's no room for mistakes, there's no room for error, there's no room for that epiphany moment when you spill the inks over the canvas and you go, Wow. Yeah, that looks beautiful.

SPEAKER_02 39:58

Absolutely. So it's just put yourself out there, just keep talking to people, let people talk about your artwork. If you're putting it up on a wall, you're inviting those conversations, so don't shut them down. Yeah, that's and don't say to somebody, no, you're wrong.

SPEAKER_01 40:11

Is that something you've had to tackle? Taking us back to this new body of work of the self-portraiture.

SPEAKER_03 40:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:18

Having said that working in the gallery has almost helps you find that direction and focus down on the stuff that's really important to you to create.

SPEAKER_02 40:28

Yeah, definitely, because I I feel like I found myself. So tapping into this project and starting this project, as I said, I do feel like there's a huge weight being lifted, and I feel like I found what I'm supposed to be doing.

SPEAKER_01 40:40

I mean, this might be too personal, but what sort of stuff are you writing in your journal that led you to want to create a self-portrait?

SPEAKER_02 40:47

So it was quite an involved journal. It would ask you for like wins through the day that you'd done.

SPEAKER_01 40:53

Oh, it was like a prompted journal.

SPEAKER_02 40:55

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it would, what's inspired you today? What are your wins from the day? Just stuff like that. So with the loads of little sections every single day that you'd write in. And so it yeah, it was making me think in a different way because you don't go home like in the evening and go, what are my little wins from the day? What am I thankful for today? That's really wanky language, and I don't particularly like it, but I did do it.

SPEAKER_01 41:18

But when you're prompted to do it in a journal, you focus on it.

Finding Direction Through Practice

SPEAKER_02 41:22

So I was doing it. I just felt like all these years I've been advocating for mental health and talking about it. Why don't I use the thing that I'm best at to showcase that and to then open that conversation up a little bit more? And then it just fell into place and it's like, oh. So did you start with sketches and so I started with they're all big when I was uh in life drawing when I was probably about 16, I'd go to the first few sessions and I'd do these little pencil drawings, they were like about that big. So like the drawing would be about A4 size, and then everyone has that one teacher, that one teacher, he was like, Let's get you a big piece of paper and some charcoal, and that was it. I was away. So a lot of my drawings are like life size, right? So this started at the end of 2024, and so I just did every week I'd do a different charcoal drawing just of my face.

SPEAKER_01 42:19

What just selfies that you'd taken of yourself?

SPEAKER_02 42:22

Yeah, just loads of different ones, so different expressions, like no expression, maybe looking pissed off, maybe crying.

SPEAKER_01 42:29

And is this where you started to post it and started to see the reactions of people that is then forming that natural progression that develops the city? So we just snowballed, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:39

Just snowballed, yeah. And I was just like, oh okay, there's actually something here. But then having those conversations with people, those educational conversations with people at work, when they're like, I've seen what you're doing, I really like it. You'd have those conversations, I'd be like, Oh, okay, I can develop this. So that's what I mean by an education.

SPEAKER_01 42:57

And in some ways, trying to help educate people a little bit as well.

SPEAKER_02 43:01

Yeah, definitely. But also, it's helping me because it's just like I can show myself without that mask. Yeah, I'm still gonna go to work with my war paint on and my hair straight and not wearing like joggers covered in paint, but I am showing the side of me that is just like me.

SPEAKER_01 43:19

But that's very brave.

SPEAKER_02 43:21

I just think as I've got older, I'm just like, oh, fucking can't be bothered with this. I'm not gonna sugarcoat anything. I haven't got time in my life for that. So I'm just gonna be me.

SPEAKER_01 43:33

But that's why I wanted to get you on because the project we've had other female portrait artists on as well. But none of them have been specifically self portraits dealing with your own issues around your own mental health.

SPEAKER_02 43:45

I mean, if you come into the studio, I it's like Narcissist City, it's just my face everywhere, and they're all fucking massive. Because now I'm working on oil paintings. But it's just like the easiest thing, isn't it? I'm there. So why not just draw myself? And it just perfectly ties into what I've been doing for all these years and trying to just say, Look, it's okay to talk about it. Doesn't make you a freak. Is it one in four people has a mental illness? I don't know the statistics, but you know, it's probably even more than that now, but that's always the one that they shout about, one in four people. It's just like everybody knows somebody. It's okay. It's alright.

SPEAKER_01 44:24

Have you had any unexpected reactions?

SPEAKER_02 44:28

Yeah, so somebody said the other day, what did she say? Something about how I can see the beauty of your love for what you're doing, but that you're doing it ugly. She was like, I can see how much you're loving this. Because I was like, oh, just because I look miserable doesn't mean I am. Today I'm alright. It's just that's the face I'm working on.

SPEAKER_01 44:47

But it's quite uh, how do I put this correctly? Anti-societal view on life. Does that make sense? Bearing in mind we live in this highlight reel of social media where everyone puts the best bits on.

SPEAKER_02 45:00

Oh gosh.

SPEAKER_01 45:01

Where you're deliberately putting the bits where you're not happy, you're sad, potentially crying, whatever images.

SPEAKER_02 45:07

Then why should you hide that? If that's, you know, if that's who you are half the time, is society pressuring you to hide that away because it makes them feel uncomfortable. Yes. Hence the title.

SPEAKER_01 45:17

Of course. Yeah. There we go. And there is the pressure.

SPEAKER_02 45:19

So it's look, this is my face, fucking deal with it. I've dealt with it. I'm alright with it. What's your problem? And that's what it's all about. This is where the aggressive, isn't it?

Journaling To Self-Portraits

SPEAKER_01 45:27

Yeah, but this is where the title comes from, doesn't it? Do I make you feel uncomfortable?

SPEAKER_03 45:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:31

It's projecting that back on the viewer for them to ask the question of themselves about not only whether the image makes them the question of speaking about mental illness makes them uncomfortable. All of these things. And that's why I think it's such an interesting project.

SPEAKER_02 45:44

Yeah. You know, I'm not afraid to say I've had a suicide attempt. Obviously wasn't successful, but I'm not afraid to say that. I was in a bit of a hypermanic state and things just weren't going very well. I wasn't looking after myself at all. So yeah, I had a suicide attempt. Obviously, I'm still here. And then I think these were the David Cameron years, National Health Service has never dealt with mental illness particularly well. Saw a psychiatrist in a NHS hospital who said, and at that point I'd done a fuckload of research, and I always say nobody knows your illness better than you do. So I knew myself, I knew the phases I'd been through, I'd researched it. I saw this psychiatrist, I've had depression all these years, but I think I've got bipolar disorder. And he just said, No, you need to reflect on your life and your choices, and sent me away.

SPEAKER_01 47:13

I need to reflect on your life and your choices.

SPEAKER_02 47:16

Yeah, I really hope he's not still in the job. And so my sister was like, fuck sake, right. And she just found me a private psychiatrist, and this woman was brilliant. So yeah, I had to pay. But I went and I sat with her for one, two hours in the first session. We went through everything, and she was like, Okay, yeah, I've listened to you. I'm making an assessment, I agree with you. And so then she started me on some medication, and that's when it all started to get better and a bit easier. But it took that's what it took, and it's so sad that it took that for me nearly coming to the end to then find the help that I needed. And I haven't had to see her now for I don't think I've seen her since I've started my new job, and that's nearly four years.

SPEAKER_01 48:01

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 48:01

So I take a fuckload of medication, I have to take an antidepressant, a dose that's higher than the NHS recommends, but she's fine with it. I have to take an antipsychotic, a really heavy dose of that, and I have to take that at night because it turns me into a zombie. And then I have to take a mood stabilizer, which is also something that it's another draw, it crosses over with epilepsy. So there's a lot of medication going around, like 42 pills a week, I have to take.

SPEAKER_01 48:27

Really?

SPEAKER_02 48:27

Oh, yeah, I've got my full-on like old person rattling thing where I put them all in.

SPEAKER_01 48:31

But this is where having the conversation about this stuff opens people's eyes to this whole thing, the fact that, you know, you're not gonna be able to see a lot of people's illness, especially when they're mentally ill.

SPEAKER_02 48:43

Of course, absolutely. And there's um, you know, Dr. Alex George, have you heard of him? He was on. Well, he was on Love Island years ago.

SPEAKER_01 48:51

That's probably why I've never heard of him.

Sharing Process Without The Gloss

SPEAKER_02 48:53

Yeah, which is not a great place to start, but he's an NHS doctor who worked in AE. And his brother took his own life. And Alex George, since then, has been incredibly open about his own mental health. Obviously, he works with it, and he's been really open about it. And he started this thing on Instagram called Post Your Pill, which is normalizing medication. So you just basically like, these are the pills I take. Ten years ago, oh bloody hell, what's going on? No, but we can't look at that, but it's just a reality.

SPEAKER_01 49:22

Well, I think the world would be amazed at how many people are on some form of antidepressants or something. Absolutely, absolutely surprising. Yeah, but it is I still think it's quite brave of you to come out openly and just talk about that. I know you say you're quite blase and you're not bothered, but that's why I love the project because it is so Yeah. I keep saying brave because I do feel like because we live in a time where it is difficult to be vulnerable.

SPEAKER_02 49:48

But actually, there's so much more strength in Yeah, and if we all did it, imagine like the communities you'd find.

SPEAKER_01 49:55

Well, just the fact that who's the stronger, the person that leans into the emotions that they're feeling, or the one that runs away from them eventually. I think the one that runs away from them is gonna fall foul of them somehow.

SPEAKER_02 50:06

But something that really bugs me that I know other people who've struggled with their mental health, and they'll be like, Okay, yeah, the doctors put me on this for a bit, but they said, Oh, we we don't we need to stay on it for a long time. And I'm like, why not? Are you gonna take a diabetic off insulin? Because they reach a level where they're managing it and they go, Oh, you don't need it anymore. It's absolute nonsense. So there's this epidemic of GPs who are obsessed with people being on antidepressants short term. That's not a solution because that chemical imbalance will still be there and they will just spiral again. So people need to, and I've had conversation with friends and they're like, Oh no, I don't want to be on these drugs. And I'm like, Well, I'm online for life and it's fine. It's okay if that's what you need. And it's got to the point now where some days I think to myself, I'm making this up. I haven't got bipolar, I'm fine. But then people will remind me, no, fucking trust me, when you're not well, you're not well.

SPEAKER_01 51:04

And would that be evident if you just decided to stop taking your medication? That'd just be evident.

SPEAKER_02 51:09

Well, aside from dealing with horrendous side effects, so if I miss one dose of my antipsychotics, the next day by the evening I'm vomiting and shaking. So you physical effects. That's just a a missed dose. So these are serious drugs, and if you're gonna come off them, you come off them slowly and it's controlled. Right. But if I were to come off them, oh Christ alive, I don't, you wouldn't recognise me. You wouldn't recognise me at all. Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow. And then there's that whole thing of it's like, oh, is this actually me? Am I being who I actually am, or am I just being medicated, Claire?

SPEAKER_01 51:44

Oh, I see. Yeah, that uncertainty of am I just living my life medicated to who is the real me?

SPEAKER_02 51:50

Yeah. But then if the real you isn't a healthy you, then it's okay to get help with that.

SPEAKER_01 51:56

Yeah, of course. And look what it's manifested, it's manifested this very cool project that you're working on. What's the plan for the or is there any plan just to keep producing these like self-portraits?

SPEAKER_02 52:09

Yeah, keep going. Yeah, I don't anticipate stopping anytime soon. I think something else that working in the gallery has taught me is that you need to put yourself out there and it's scary. So I'm gonna start applying for exhibitions and try and get my work out there. I know from the stats at work that the majority of people get turned down.

SPEAKER_01 52:30

Is it harder for you to submit them as self-portraits rather than portraits of someone else? Or does it not really matter because the viewer doesn't necessarily know that you're the artist?

SPEAKER_02 52:42

Well, the funny conversation is that there's the potential this year that I could submit my own work to where I work, and that's fine, we're allowed to do that. But then it's like, is that a bit close to home? If it was a lovely, pretty self-portrait, then it'd be like, oh no, isn't she lovely? But then if people I work with are coming in and going, what the hell is that dragon on the wall? Jesus Christ. So I don't know. But then is that just a little bit of fear creeping in?

SPEAKER_01 53:07

Sounds like it.

SPEAKER_02 53:08

So maybe fuck it, I'll just do it. I think it should. Okay, fuck it, I'll do it.

SPEAKER_01 53:13

And what about things like you discussed trying to build a bit more awareness around the mental health and stuff?

Humility, Crits, And Community

SPEAKER_02 53:18

I think that this project could end up being helpful to people. And ultimately, I think eventually I'd quite like to show the body of work. It needs a lot more, yeah. You know, it's there's not enough of it. So I anticipate the body of work getting much bigger. And I might have to work on it for like another year before I really think about okay, I've got enough that I can do something with this now. But I think I could, I think there's a lot of scope, and this is another thing that work has taught me of different avenues and how you can take these projects. You can do, you could I could do workshops. Places will get tutors in. I could go and do a mental health painting workshop. You can do it for adults, you could do it for kids, I could go into schools.

SPEAKER_01 53:58

What about some sort of funding?

SPEAKER_02 54:00

Yeah, I'm gonna look at it, yeah, yeah. I'm gonna look at getting some funding. It's really competitive. Arts Council is amazing. There's also like national lottery project grants, and you have to pick which way you're gonna go.

SPEAKER_01 54:12

But with the context of the project, raising awareness about mental illness, surely that sounds right up there, sort of street.

SPEAKER_02 54:19

Well, you'd hope so. But also, if my project is gonna be successful, I'd like to think there's loads of other people out there doing projects about their own mental health because that's healthy, and that means that other people aren't afraid to talk about it as well. So so I don't I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 54:34

But collaborative shows around that, is there are there specific open calls around things like that? Probably, yeah. I'm sure there are.

SPEAKER_02 54:40

Sure there are, yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 54:41

You just gotta find them.

SPEAKER_02 54:42

I mean, and that's another beauty of social media, you can just search for them because they're all that's how you do it now. It's all online.

SPEAKER_01 54:48

Do you think some open calls have more merit than others? Bearing in mind your experience of working in a gallery.

SPEAKER_02 54:54

I think it depends who you talk to.

SPEAKER_01 54:56

Um what do you mean by that?

SPEAKER_02 54:57

So there are so the people who aren't necessarily open to all of those conversations we talked about, they will put a lot of stock in London shows, things at the mall galleries, Royal Academy, but if you actually look, there's just shitloads all over the place. And that's also the beauty of social media and all of the different ways you can get your work out there now. There's so many like alternative venues and stuff, which I'm now aware of that I never was before, just through the people I work with. In some ways, it might be easier to be an artist now because there's a lot of outlets for you. But then does that mean there's loads more competition?

SPEAKER_01 55:39

Potentially, yeah. But surely going back to what you said about hoping that this project finds its audience, that's the same for every you know, every artist, I guess. You know, I'm not hugely into landscape paintings, but there will be an audience for landscape paintings.

SPEAKER_02 55:55

Absolutely. There were some people just going, that is so self-indulgent. Like, why are you just painting yourself? That's fine. And I'll have a conversation with you about why I'm doing it. But this is what I mean about having these conversations, and like I believe in the work I'm doing. It doesn't mean everyone else is going to, but that's all right. It's life. And something I have learned like, if you could get if you had to get one instruction tattooed on your forehead for other people, it would just be like, remember art is subjective. So you will put in for an exhibition and you won't get in because that day those judges weren't looking for that kind of work.

SPEAKER_01 56:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 56:32

But don't ever, ever, ever let anybody tell you your work isn't good enough. If you believe in it, then you've won. If you believe in what you're doing, because that's how I feel now, I feel so good about what I'm doing. It's not going to be everybody's cup of tea, but I believe in it.

SPEAKER_01 56:47

So Yeah, as we say, just the act of creating alone is an act of bravery sometimes, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 56:52

But don't let anybody ever. And this is what I mean about those people who aren't willing to have those conversations, because they're the kinds of people who will say, No, it's not very good. Just because they're arrogant.

SPEAKER_01 57:04

Arrogance is just fear wearing a crown.

SPEAKER_02 57:07

I was literally about to say that. Arrogance just comes from insecurity completely.

SPEAKER_01 57:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 57:11

It really does. And it's one of the things I've got least time for is people being arrogant.

SPEAKER_01 57:17

And I think with the humility comes the ability to learn.

SPEAKER_02 57:20

Yeah, totally. And that's what these conversations and like just this constant learning is about. You've got to be open to it all.

SPEAKER_01 57:27

And hoping from the conversations that we're having on the podcast that people are learning and seeing learning from every different story that we're telling. Because that's how we've learned for millennia.

SPEAKER_02 57:37

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 57:38

Telling stories.

SPEAKER_02 57:39

Oh, that's beautiful.

Owning The Work And Rejection

SPEAKER_01 57:42

Edit the laugh out. Yeah, you're not supposed to laugh that hard, easy. Well, we do have a closing tradition on the Creative Noah Land podcast that you know all about because you are an avid listener of the podcast. We asked you for a quote that resonates with you and a potential future guest in your network that you think might be an interesting person to come on the podcast.

SPEAKER_02 58:05

So I've got a quote that is so important to me, I have it tattooed down my spine.

SPEAKER_01 58:10

That's pretty important.

SPEAKER_02 58:11

And it's by Van Gogh, who you'll know is a celebrated head case. So, and when I told my sister I was gonna get this tattoo, she went, Oh god, he's not your bipolar hero, is he? Your bipolar heroes. And I was like, Yeah, I've got a collection of bipolar heroes like Carrie Fisher, Stephen Fry, Van Gogh. Yeah, I'm collecting them.

SPEAKER_01 58:34

A collection of bipolar heroes. I like that though.

SPEAKER_02 58:37

Carrie Fisher, though, seriously, that one was an absolute queen. So the quote is I've only got the first part of the quote. If I am worth anything later, I am worth something now. And then the second bit of the quote that I couldn't fit on my spine is for wheat is wheat, even if people only see it as grass to begin with.

SPEAKER_01 58:57

I know that quote very well. It's just like wheat is wheat, even if people see it as grass to begin with.

SPEAKER_02 59:04

So it's just like, just it's okay, your time will come.

SPEAKER_01 59:07

I love that. That is a great quote.

SPEAKER_02 59:10

And I don't really know why I got it on my spine because I can't see it.

SPEAKER_01 59:13

Yeah, that's true. And what about a suggested guest?

SPEAKER_02 59:17

Oh my goodness, I know loads of amazing people through work. I'm not gonna name them because I don't know if they'd be feel comfortable talking, but so there's the lady who employed me at the gallery. She is now head curator at one of the region's biggest art galleries.

SPEAKER_01 59:33

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 59:34

She's worked at huge places over the years, Imperial War Museum. She's worked with people like Tracy Emin and Damien Hurst. Hate him.

SPEAKER_01 59:44

Oh, okay, come on. We can't we can't avoid that. Why do you hate Damien Hearst?

SPEAKER_02 59:48

Because he doesn't do it himself. He's not honest. He's an ideas man, isn't he? Basically, that's what he is, and then he gets other people to do it. And then the whole NFT thing that he did a few years ago, and it was just like so cynical. The paint I follow him on Instagram, I don't know why, because well, it's a complete hate watch, isn't it? So that's what I do. But he produces these massive paintings and they're just shit. But it's because it's him, they'll sell for whatever. And I just don't think he's very good, and I don't think he's honest.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:22

Do you think potentially Damien Hurst used to be good?

SPEAKER_02 1:00:27

Yeah, he did some interesting stuff to start with, but then I just think that Brand Hurst has taken it. Yeah, and he's realised his own success and he knows what sells, and I just think it gets a bit soulless. Like if it got to the point where I was just churning out the same old shit without thinking about it, I'd be like, oh okay, I'm done now. She's gonna watch Holmes under the hammer and not do it.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:48

Gonna watch Holmes under the hammer.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:51

Which I do love, actually.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:52

Okay. So your previous boss, potentially.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:56

She's brilliant.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:57

She's worked with all those people, even Damien Hurst, who you were.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:00

Yeah, she's just and her knowledge is phenomenal.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:02

And do you think she would be a good person because of that knowledge that she can pass on to other artists?

SPEAKER_02 1:01:09

Oh, yeah, and just the stories she's got, and just well, hopefully she's got a few about Damien Hurst after that part. She's very real and she doesn't sugarcoat it.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:18

Cool. So that's what we like on the podcast.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:20

And then there's another lady, she's an artist, so she had a career as a teacher, and now she produces some incredible work that looks at children and their experience of poverty and deprivation, and the way she approaches it is incredibly interesting. So I think it started during lockdown. She was going on dog walks and she started collecting twigs, and then collecting twigs, she started to really look after the twigs. She didn't want to break the twigs, and she started wrapping the twig. The twigs became children, and hearing her talk about her work is really interesting.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:54

Okay.

Medication, Stigma, And Survival

SPEAKER_02 1:01:54

But she's also another fabulously like angry lady like me. So it's just take no shit. This is what it is.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:01

Okay, so we will get in contact with those so far unnamed ladies that uh could be interesting guests for the podcast. I think that all that's left to say is thank you very much for doing the podcast. You're welcome. I look forward to seeing where this project goes because as I've said before, it is a brave project to put yourself out there so much, even though you are quite oh fuck it. And that's the kind of aspect.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:25

Is that another mask?

SPEAKER_01 1:02:26

But it's exactly that. Is that a you know, it's often if we say fuck it about our own work, it's easier to be a bit less.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:33

Yeah, completely. Maybe there's another mask under the mask that I need to look at.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:38

There you go, there's another explanation. Shit, okay, I better get another journal. Right, well, we better finish this podcast and you can go and get another journal and we can uh and we can wait for the next portrait to come out.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:49

Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:49

Claire, thank you very much indeed. Thanks for listening to the Creative Nobeland podcast. If you found anything in this episode useful or inspiring, please consider subscribing or sharing it with a friend. You can also help the podcast by clicking the support the show link in the show notes or by grabbing yourself something from the Creative Nobeland shop. And here's the bonus. When you join the community through our website, you'll get a special discount code that gives you free shipping on all orders. So, before you buy anything, be sure to join the community. Every bit of support helps us keep sharing these inspiring stories. So, thanks again for listening, and until next time, explore, inspire, and create.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:39

Better to have a short life that is full of what you like doing than a long life spent in a miserable way. And so that boy is so important to consider this question what do I decide?