Faye Harnest

Artist Statement

Before my brain injury, I was a writer. It was my identity and purpose. Since losing the ability to read and write books, I am learning to use visual art as my primary way of telling stories. My illustrations are investigations into grief, depression, anxiety and disability politics, and experiments to discover ways of drawing myself when I don’t know who I am anymore. I work digitally, with a darkened screen and coloured filters, and zoom in very close to look at small sections of the work, one at a time. I focus on one element, and one layer, collaging them afterward to reduce cognitive and visual overwhelm. The ability to experiment digitally with different textures and colours, and to move back and forth through variations and changes, allows me to minimize decision making that would otherwise be incapacitating. One series I’m working on now uses fragmented lines and distorted text to represent the pain and difficulty I have with reading and writing. I begin these illustrations with the typed pages from the unfinished novel I was writing at the time of my accident, then destroy them.