I guess my work acts as a visual diary
It is a way for me to essentially
tell my story of my personal experience of mental health
Because it's such a
therapeutic medium, it's the best
appropriate method for me
It's nice to have like a hands-on medium
because I find it quite a therapeutic
way of working
So, I came across tufting on Instagram which
I feel is quite, it's a massive thing on
Instagram at the minute
I decided to buy a little needle punch
and that's kind of where my tufting
journey started and was fascinated from
day one and now it is essentially my career
I have Complex PTSD or
Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder which
comes about from multiple or long-term
trauma, so that could be childhood trauma,
abusive relationships
I was once groomed by an older man and
things like that and
it's those incidents that have kind of
shaped who I am now and it can affect
like my sense of self
Some days you feel fine but if there's
any kind of trigger in your environment
it can all just flare up and suddenly
you can kind of lose yourself
For a long time I was just ignoring it
Having a diagnosis I think is actually
quite reassuring because it's just like
actually I understand why I have these
certain reactions
It was nice to just be
able to have this diagnosis and
this, I guess, just series of letters I can tell
to someone and they can then go look up
online what it actually means and it
means that people can probably better
understand me
At the period earlier this year that I was
experiencing quite a bad patch in
mental health, I actually stopped making
for a couple of months
I'm glad that I was seeking treatment at
the time that I did because I feel like
if I hadn't done, I might not be
continuing my art because
I would just have too much doubt around
it all and just not feel comfortable
doing it
It's much better to just keep my hands
busy so it distracts the brain and it
gives me respite throughout the day and
I guess just gives me like a nice coping
mechanism of like, there's just so many
things to think about when you're
creating, it's like the planning process,
drawing up, selecting yarn colours and
whatnot and having that tactility
because it's
one of the things for PTSD or Complex PTSD
that they recommend is having some
kind of grounding method, so like some
people have stones that they hold and
they rub and that kind of brings them
back to the present and things like that
but I think having such a tactile medium
also acts in a similar
kind of way
Collecting all the yarns and things like that
feeling the textures, what fibre
content it is and things like that, that's
kind of my grounding method, I suppose
because I always struggled with being
given a stone or I had like a little
scent bag
and they never kind of had the right
effect of like calming me down but like
give me a ball of yarn and that's it
I'm just calm
It's all about kind of organic shapes
and and like comparison between disease
and doubt and the idea that doubt is a
disease that continues its hold over us by
morphing and shifting and changing
A feeling of
PTSD or depression and whatnot, you
wouldn't really describe it as a soft
feeling so it's this weird paradox
between a very soft outcome but a very harsh thought
It’s like why is there
this really harsh phrase but this lovely
soft texture and why are these
what some people perceive as like quite
lovely, beautiful, bright colours
when the piece is about dark mental
health and things like that and these strange
organic forms which have like splices of
like sharp triangles, almost like
fragments of glass or something coming
through it
I suppose it keeps people on their toes
and they're engaged with the work
There's a lot to play with, there's a lot
to look at, there's a lot to take in
There’s a lot of people who will still really
refrain from discussing mental health
and especially discussing it with other
people, so I think going to an exhibition
with a group of friends or something and
seeing a work like mine would hopefully
open some kind of conversation and
things like that and just kind of bring down the taboo factor
It's a very dynamic piece of art and I think
it says a lot more than a flat painting
would because there is a surface texture
and you can see the handmade element to
it so you understand that there is a
person making it behind it, it isn't this -
it isn't a perfect commercial outcome
and I think it's important to remember
that handmade element and remember that
at the end of the day, artists are people who
are going through stuff just like
everybody else
It helps us, I suppose, it kind of
it makes it easier to talk about these
topics, it's good to be vulnerable
but sometimes it's easier to be
vulnerable through the creation of artwork
and the presentation of artwork