Author Archives: the Bipolar Village Gallery

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Scott Hunt: Photography

I was in the USAF when trouble began to brew for me. After being discharged from the USAF in ’95, I was having great difficulties maintaining a job. My life was a roller coaster and I almost lost the love of my life. I went to the Denver VA and had my self-placed on the mental ward, where I was diagnosed as bipolar. Many medications later, I have finely come to the conclusion this is a part of who I am. I have embraced this part of me, I truly feel without being Bi-Polar I could never see the world the way I do. These things I cannot explain, but can only share this understanding with others whom have the same sight I do. I am Bi-Polar and proud of it. I love art it is the only way I know how to express myself, I am also a poet, and struggling writer. Without art, there would be no life, for life is art. Oh, also I currently live in Montana.

Forecast Calls for Frogs

Alexandra Petersen: Paintings

Alex Petersen is an artist living and working in Portland, Oregon. Being raised with a mother who was also an artist and teacher, art has long been a defining part of her life.

Alex works with encaustic over pen and ink drawings when not hiding from the dark or wildly chasing after rainbows. Finally receiving a proper diagnoses of bipolar II after years of dealing with a brain full of chiaroscuro, she is just now trying to get used to a new normal.

Alex has had solo shows throughout the Portland area, including the Bella Perla Gallery and the Tyson Gallery, as well as numerous public venues. Current works focus on themes of isolation and introspection, and the subtle strangeness of childhood memories and dream states. Animals are often featured prominently, serving as symbolic manifestations of the hopes and fears of childhood that sleep within us all.

You may find more of Alex’s work on her website here.

Empry/Full on a Desolate Landscape

Lorelei Beckstrom: Paintings

Lorelei Beckstrom hails originally from Minnesota. After studying painting, sculpture, and graphic design for seven years, Beckstrom relocated to the mountains of Colorado in 1994, thus fulfilling a childhood dream to move to the west. She took a long hiatus from fine art to build an off-the-grid dream home, and while she lived in a tipi adjacent to the structure-in-progress, found herself stretching canvases on tipi poles and resuming her artistic passion.

After a diagnosis of Bipolar II in 2004, her painting became her primary form of therapy. Leaving her high-stress publishing business and closing her yoga studio, she finally had time to focus on her health and on her painting.

Beckstrom originally became known for her acrylic, wire, and etched plexiglass paintings and installations of brains, neurons, and machines, but after 20 years, returned to oils and a more academic narrative figurative approach. It was then that she began to immerse herself in a world of wire walkers and audiences, painting with what she eventually realized was an ironic passion—the artist actually harbors a fear of both heights and crowds. Beckstrom theorizes that she’s responding to her “fears in some odd way, and painting to work through them.” Beckstrom says she realized that she had “been an artist for all those years, but not a painter.” She now very much considers herself to be a painter. Beckstrom often feels like she’s leading the painting, up until a point, and then it leads her. “The world created in the painting becomes richer than real life- more real, almost.”

Beckstrom has shown prolifically in Colorado, where she co-owned the award-winning Rubbish Gallery, and her work resides in collections in the United States, Mexico, and England. She is represented by The Modbo in Colorado Springs and the Carla Wright Gallery in Denver. Her most recent work can be viewed at www.loreleibeckstrom.com.

Amy Frank 2

Amy Frank: Drawing

Amy Frank is a Canadian born artist who was diagnosed with Biploar Disorder in 2008 after struggling with depression, psychosis and substance abuse. Amy was encouraged into art school at a very young age and began to excel in her drawings by her early teens. In 2011 Amy launched the website www.amyfrank.ca, a collection of her personal art and creative writing. The website also shares the story of Amy’s journey with substance abuse and bipolar disorder. Currently in 2012 Amy is clean, sober and stable. She works as a professional artist out of her home town, Victoria, British Colombia, Canada. Continue reading

Budapest Sunset

Sabina Lucia: Photography

Born to artistic parents it was no surprise that I was naturally drawn to creative expression. After gaining a 2:1 BA Hons in Fashion and then working for 6 years as a personal shopper, styling thousands of people, I quit a few years ago to concentrate on photography and art and write about things which fascinate me. I have nurtured a deep need for creative expression through photography, painting, drawing, collage and textile work. I love finding ‘hidden treasures’ to photograph and working out the best composition and angles to record the beauty I find in surrounding environments. Disliking obviously Photoshopped images, I prefer to keep my work true to life, only using software to crop photos. Continue reading

Horse Head

Lenore Giesbrecht: Engraving

I am a 45-year-old mother of two wonderful kids, my daughter is 14 and my son is 8. I live in Medicine Hat Alberta, Canada. We have two Beagles, a cat, a toad and two horses, so animals play a big part in my life. I was diagnosed with bipolar shortly after my son was born after a few doctors misdiagnosing it as post-partum depression. Although I always had my suspicions about what may have been “wrong” with me. I have been an artist pretty much all my life; it was always a place for me to “be” when things were too overwhelming in my life. I used my drawings and sketches as a way to recharge and release my energy at the same time. Continue reading

"Manic Depression" by Jeni Booker Senter

Jeni Booker Senter: Poetry

Jeni Booker Senter is a poet, essayist, and journalist devoted to the advancement of women. She currently teaches English to at-risk teens. Her writing has earned awards in the Duque Wilson Essay Contest and the LaRoche Memorial Poetry Contest, and she is a contributor to NW Florida Business Climate, Blackwater Review Literary Journal, Journal of South Texas Studies, Socialist Women Magazine: International Women’s Day Edition, A&U, and Troubadour. Continue reading

Self-Portrait

Sarah: Paintings

My name is Sarah. I live in Kent, UK. I have two sons at home. I’ve struggled with depression for many years and had a lot of therapy. I only found out I had bipolar disorder by co-incidence some 8 years ago but never really knew or understood what that meant to me. I have used my art to help me express the various stages of my journey, the extreme changes mood can have from one day to the next, and how differently I have felt about myself, my beliefs and the world around me. Continue reading

Acrylic on Canvas, Louise Ryan

Louise Ryan: Paintings

I am Louise Ryan and I am a 42 year old passionate artist. As an artist I have a love hate relationship with my bipolar. My illness can bring me such creative energy and vivid ideas. It can also drain my life-force and cloak me with melancholy. But the beauty and tragedy of the human condition is always at the core of my art. I rejoice in my elation and acknowledge the aesthetic of torment. “The secret of joy is the mastery of pain.” Anaïs Nin. Continue reading

Cervia Kite Festival 2012

Nick James: Kites

Nick James is a kitemaker living with bipolar disorder in the UK. From 1985 he has been designing and making kites and for the last nineteen years running workshops in schools. He started by making seagulls, falcons and pterodactyls. He then moved on to designing more abstract and complex kites such as his Angels and Devils.

In 1998 he won a prize in the ‘Concours de Creation’ at Dieppe International Kite Festival (the Olympics of the kite world!). Continue reading