My Name Is Lacey. I'm almost 36 years old. I just started painting a little less than two years ago. I love being a mixed medium artist with all its endless possibilities!!!
I have always been creative and ingenuitive growing up but I have not always had my own safe space to be me and to express and discover myself and the world around me, let alone create beautiful things before now.
Now in my thirties, with my Mental Illness diagnoses, I have finally through Disability have obtained medical coverage to get help, a bit of money to live and my very own cute little apartment where I have the stability of safety and non-judgement one needs to live and thrive and do art! I have set up my tiny apartment as my home for my cat and I, and as my studio.
Through painting and writing I have found tools to help me find my voice and also help me find my feet. Painting really grounds me into the here and now, the present. I am living with Major Depression, PTSD, and Dissociation (feelings of not feeling real or the world around me not feeling real). Art gives me joy, purpose, a voice, a connection with myself and others, it's grounding, and an outlet for beauty and truth.
Life for me when not going to therapy or doctors appointments could be just a simple day of getting up eventually, loving on my cat and creating something, and that gives me meaning. I really believe in the healing process of art, how art finds us and heals us and never leaves us. It gives us back everything we have lost or that was stolen from us and that has been damaged. With art there is always more to life, more beauty, more desires, more truths, more places to go.
An artist I met at Art-A-Whirl in North East Minneapolis Art's District helped me begin painting. It's an awesome three day event where the artists of North East show there art with music food and lots of people. I loved her bright colors and just liked her art. I started talking to her and was asking her question and pouring my heart out to her. I finally asked her how do you get over the fear of starting to paint. I told her I have a billion mixed media art books and watched a million videos but I cannot get myself to start. She said I can help you. Laura came over to my house the next week and gave me a lesson free of charge, not really a lesson, just hung out. She helped me with faces. That's when I started painting. She helped me start.
After I had that one sitting with Laura and started painting I started to go to a Drop In Center for people with SPMI (Serious and Persistant Mental Illness). They have an open art studio hours so many times a week. Through that I made friends and got more comfortable making art and learned a lot from others. I also had the oppurtunity to show my work at two different Mental Health Shows, Artability and Courage Kenny. Being able to show a couple of pieces in an art show was so meaningful and just completed the whole process for me. Being an artist is my therapy, its not my career. It helps me with my Dissociation, by helping me get grounded into the here in now. It helps me with my depression in helping me figure out who I am and pulling me out of the fog. Just recently I signed up to take part in an art show that is not an mental health art show, its the St. Paul Art Crawl, it's like the same thing as Minneapolis's Art-A-Whirl but in St. Paul. I will be showing in the Union Depot where other artists with disabilites are showing, REPRESENT! This gives me great hope and meaning, giving me a chance once or twice a year to show my art. It gives my voice a platform to be heard by others, something I never had before in life. I can't wait for October for my first time at the Art Crawl.
I will fear no evil thing for Art is with me!!!!!
LET'S CREATE!
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