Interview of me by Kathryn Vercillo
About art and mental health
Wow! I'm in awe of how
wove (crocheted?) all of my answers to her recent interview questions together so skillfully! She asked excellent questions about why art creating and reading matter so much to me - and I told all!!(Spoiler: art is a way of coping with what happens in life and aiding good mental health skills.)
Specifically we talked about my illustrations for Dr. Bob's Emotional Repair Program First Aid Kit and how and why that work is such a big part of my life and creativity today.
Kathryn also selected well from among my various art images to illustrate the interview and simply did an amazing job!! Thank you so much Kathryn!!! You can read the whole interview here 👇
Great interview. I enjoyed the lively discussion and intimate insights shared by both of you.
Sue, thank you from the bottom of my heart for sharing your story and art. I had put off reading the interview for some reason, even though I was really looking forward to it. Turns out, it was just what I needed to read this morning.
For me, something that strongly resonated was when you wrote (and I hope you don't mind that I’m paraphrasing a bit): [being] “depressed doesn’t help my creativity nor does it change that which I’m upset about… it is possible to feel hopeless and still behave in ways that reflect hope. So, a critical aspect of my creative life is that I try, daily, to feed my good wolf and maintain my hope. I try to feed my joy so it won’t be hungry. I feed my good wolf so I can provide food (via my art) for other good wolves in this world. That’s how I’m fighting injustice.”
This is just so crucial, so vital… and yet sometimes so difficult. It reminds me a passage in a book my husband and I recently listened to, Those We Thought We Knew by David Joy. In it one of the characters, Vess Jones, says (and again I'm paraphrasing a bit): “My happiness [is] my defiance. My joy [is] my act of dissent.”