I am a magical autistic artist with bipolar disorder and I also have synesthesia. I paint scenes from my daydreams. I have been creating art in a variety of mediums like physical paper collages and repurposing magazines to tell different stories through collage art on canvas and on wood for over 20 years now.
It's an amazing outlet for me to be creative and express my thoughts and I love the buzz I get from experimenting with colors and shapes, which makes my creative process even more fun. I love making art with pictures of very strong colors and abstract pieces that speak to the deepest depths of the soul. I try to create art that I hope will make you feel fascinated and joyous with a little bit of magic and mystery thrown in.
Without my art I’d be forever struggling in an empty mental prison in my own head, never getting any meaningful recognition and always feeling disconnected from the world the rest of my life. My mood swings are extremely intense, ranging from bouts of irritability and anger to extreme depressive lows which last for months on end that I have no control over.
My autism makes me feel out of place in the world around me. I have no idea how to explain this stuff to anyone in words only in visual form. I channel all of my feelings and thoughts into my artwork, which I hope will have a positive impact on the world. My work is created through synesthesia and is a blend of my imagination and what I see. I can't express through words what I want to, but I can do it through my art, music, poetry and spoken word compositions.
I like to escape reality and hang out in my mind. I tend to come up with things that might not happen in the real world. If you're looking for a look that is totally unique, then I am your artist. My art is made from a place deep within, where the most interesting stories are told. I see the world in vivid colors. I create magical art from the depths of my imagination. I use color to tell stories and share my feelings. The words to describe me are tucked away in my thoughts and I hope my work will speak for me.
So that was my online persona, pretty mysterious and cool don’t you think? Well now comes my own reality and how I personally see and look at myself and my current situation in life. I’m currently in my early 40s and I still live at home with my Mum, I’ve never left home since I was born you could say.
After an enormous mental breakdown at age 21 in late 1999 I was finally diagnosed and treated for bipolar disorder and also assessed and medicated for ADHD. The 20 years after that are a long story as you can imagine I’m sure but eventually after a close family member received an autism diagnosis I sought my own assessment for autism.
This assessment with a team of specialists diagnosed me with autism spectrum disorder at the age of 41, almost exactly 20 years after my bipolar diagnosis as it happens. I didn’t even realise I had synesthesia until my Mum told me she had it too one day randomly.
I’m very disabled in so many ways I can’t really even begin to describe them all here. My Mum looks after my daily needs like food and she sorts the bills out as I’m irrationally terrified of letters through the post from past bad experiences.
I can’t work due to disability and so I have no income to speak of at all. I struggle to even get out of the house to my local shop to be totally honest due to extreme paranoia and anxiety including but not limited to panic attacks and serious self harming behaviours.
So basically to me, as I myself relate to my opinions, I’m an early 40s very creative person who can’t work or concentrate on anything and who is bound to feel extreme depression for months on end every year without fail.
Autistic people tend to have trouble with social interaction and may have issues with communication. When they do share their thoughts they may do so in an unusual way which doesn't make sense to others. People with autism are just as intelligent as those without autism, but their abilities may be more focused on specific areas and less on general intelligence. Many autistic people also have difficulty with reading emotions and recognizing facial expressions. They may not know what is appropriate behavior from others, and this can make them anxious or frustrated.
Bipolar people experience mood swings from being very happy to very sad and may have problems with making good decisions. While bipolar disorders are usually treatable, they are still considered to be incurable by the medical community. They are also one of the most disabling mental disorders
A common misconception of bipolar disorder is that it makes you either very happy or very sad. However, a person with bipolar disorder can feel both emotions on the same day. The person may be feeling happy and then switch to feeling depressed without any noticeable change in his or her mood.
It's often difficult for people with bipolar disorder to understand what they are feeling because the feelings are so strong and change so quickly. The causes of bipolar disorder have not been fully discovered yet and therefore there is no cure available yet. However, there are treatments available that can help with the symptoms of this mental illness such as mood stabilizers and antidepressants.
Synesthetes experience a phenomenon called synesthesia where one sense is experienced as another. For example, seeing colors when hearing music or tasting colors when reading words.
Synesthesia is a neurological condition that causes people's brains to cross wires, or in some cases to change and evolve over time. Some forms of synesthesia are more common than others. The most well-known form of synesthesia is grapheme-color synesthesia where certain letters or numbers might have an associated color.
Other forms of synesthesia include things such as tasting words, hearing colors, seeing smells, or feeling sounds, a person with synesthesia might experience colored words or numbers, tastes without eating anything, or smells with no apparent cause. Synesthesia is not uncommon in the general population; about 1 in 25 people have it.
