Personal Story: Lucie D

Before ME claimed my life, one of the things that I felt defined who I was, and that gave me pleasure, was that I was a *plein air watercolourist. Rather like painting a photographic negative, the primary rule of watercolours is that, from the very beginning sketch, you must have careful planning to leave your light areas. Also, you have to get the final product close to done in one sitting due to the very nature of plein air painting, as well as the wet on wet style I preferred.

Developing another artistic method that I was physically and cognitively able to manage, proved to be something of a journey, but **analog collage has come to be my new love. It uses the same underpinnings of composition, colour theory and narrative as any art practice. However, I can work indoors, even in bed; images can be completed in stages; collage actually works better if I don’t try to plan it; and the strictures of purely analog collage, using only found images, give wonderfully serendipitous outcomes.

The downside is that collage scraps are like cat hair, small pieces of paper seem to find their way to all corners of my house!

The collage below,Third Party, represents the losses ME has imposed on my life and the way ME makes us so invisible, not only to health professionals, but also to society in general.

*The French term plein air means out of doors and refers to the practice of painting entire finished pictures out of doors.

**Analog (hand-cut) collage. Collage comes from french, coller meaning to glue. It describes artwork made by assembling different forms to create a new whole.