Talking Therapy - Grief and Gratitude With Caitlin Hanna

Transcript

Welcome to the Art Against Mental Illness podcast. My name is Alex Loveless and this is my podcast about the healing powers of art for artists, art lovers, the art curious and anyone with an interest in mental health and well-being. Welcome back everyone. So I’ve got a little bit of housekeeping to do before this episode. So this is my interview with Caitlin Hannah. It was recorded just before Christmas last year 2024 and so some of the references in here talk about things that happened for example November last year. So just bear in mind that refers to November 2023. This conversation gets quite emotive so I need to do some content warnings. During this discussion we touch on issues like cancer, the death of a loved one, grief, disability, some description of surgery, medications, chronic mental illness, suicide and probably some other stuff that I missed. So if that stuff’s going to traumatize you then maybe skip this one. But despite all that I think this episode has a really positive message so I hope you enjoy it and I’ll see you again soon. I’m here in the Perth Creative Exchange with Caitlin Hannah. I’ve known Caitlin for a couple of years a couple of years. We’ve exhibited together in the various exhibitions I’ve done around this area and so I’m really pleased to welcome Caitlin. Caitlin do you want to introduce yourself? I’m Caitlin Hannah. I am a contemporary artist and I kind of say that my work’s all just like emotional vomit onto a page because it’s all kind of surrounding my lived experiences with mental health, grief, kind of just how I’ve existed in the universe and seen things. So yeah I kind of do mixed media stuff like all my work tends to be different. I’ve been doing a lot of paintings lately but it all tends to be kind of the media that fits kind of the vibe that I’m trying to do put across. So I’m just looking around me at your walls and so I see some stuff on canvases, some stuff on paper, lots of different mediums, a combination of almost cartoonish imageries and writing and in fact some embroidery and so I think one thing you and I have in common is we tend to put textual elements to our artworks. Do you want to tell us about how that comes together for you? Yeah so I’ve been doing art for kind of, I don’t know, my entire life and I kind of stumbled onto text in art from like artists I admire. So like Jenny Holzer, Tracy Ammon, Louise Bourgeois, stuff like that. And I kind of see putting text in art as kind of an inclusive element because I think you could get messages across clearer if in a written way but also kind of a little bit like the work is poetry, the work is honesty, the work is it’s got my handwriting in it, it’s got my like artist techniques in it, it’s got like I’ve got a piece that’s just biropen and it’s this is too much written just over and over and over again because it’s kind of, I don’t know, it’s art in itself like the the vomit and the feeling in it but then the text is also, it just explains things I think a little. So the repetition thing is something I’m also very familiar with I think, so we’re both autistic right and I have phrases, motifs, bits of music, bits of things that people have said to me that are on like sample loops in my head and it changes all the time and I’ll attach on to a slogan or something. It might be something meaningful, it might be complete nonsense, I’ve got so many utterly nonsense things that get jammed in my head and I don’t really understand why and so I can really relate to that and where you’ve said this is too much I’m presuming that was a fairly emotional moment for you when you did that. Yeah well I think it kind of was a lot of things going on in that time like well I like you said I’m autistic so I was really overwhelmed by everything that was going on all the little jobs that I had to do and all that and then there’s the mental health side as well of just actually I’ve not been well and like dealing with not being mentally well is a lot and then I’ve been going through a lot of grief as well and that’s a lot so then it’s kind of everything in but I do catch like little phrases and I think I always have like a standout text in a work and there might be little background texts like written in and stuff but I think it is it’s like the catchphrase and it gets stuck in my head and it needs to like come out and it can be like played on as well so with the embroidery I’ve got comes not back his house stands empty but that’s from a Euripides Greek tragic play thing okay um if he comes not back his house stands empty um and I kind of played changed a pronoun but yes like fiddling with things I think it’s fun as well so we’re gonna we’re gonna talk about grief um depending on what what what of your what you’re looking at it comes across as very uh very prominent uh and the one you just mentioned I think is very directly related to that do you want to tell us about would you mind describing yeah so that is it’s a in a box frame it’s a black it’s a black canvas but on printed onto the canvas is a brain scan like an MRI scan of um it’s actually my mum’s brain um and in the brain you can see a tumor and you can also see the swelling in the brain as well so the white there’s white wispies that are swelling and onto that print kind of of the brain I’ve embroidered the shape of the brain tumor so it stands out in like a dark red and then also next to it I’ve embroidered she comes not back his house stands empty and so and just to um accentuate this the white patches that I mean there’s a lot of that right so I think anyone would be able to tell that was not a healthy brain yeah um do you want to just tell us a bit about what happened there yeah so um kind of my mum a few years ago there’s a whole background story um she was diagnosed with esophageal cancer stage three which is apparently usually just a death sentence um but she got put in this this medical trial at Dundee Uni where they were starting a new therapy and they kind of did a fun funky surgery um so they gave her immunotherapy and chemo and they also removed her entire esophagus and to replace it they moved her stomach up so her stomach attached directly to her throat it was very so she could no longer after that she was never allowed to lie down because she would her stomach acid would just come into her mouth and she would stop breathing and she survived she was cancer free in remission um which is amazing she that she managed that and she kind of paved the way a bit with the immunotherapy and stuff um that this is kind of a treatment but it did mean for the rest of her life she was never allowed to lie down so she had to sit up to sleep and everything and she was kind of always in discomfort and pain because of it and then start of last year she started to act really weird and we were like what is going on with you Kirsty this isn’t this isn’t who you are she was struggling to go to work she was struggling to get out of bed and she was becoming quite childlike in a lot of ways and we got doctors around and they were like oh she’s just depressed and we’re like well we know depression and we know what that’s like but this isn’t it because she wants to be able to get out of bed she wants to go to work it’s not that she wasn’t having depressed thoughts she was unable to um get her body to move so she fell over i think she got taken into an ambulance because my dad couldn’t get her up and they did a brain scan and they found this massive tumour um that was like a quarter of a brain and then almost a full half of her brain was swollen from kind of the pressure of that tumour um and they said you’ve got probably a couple of weeks to a month or two um and they she had the option of um getting a surgery to try and reduce the tumour to try and buy her more time um so she decided to go for that so within the next week was that surgery from her diagnosis to kind of the surgery it was maybe four five days um but the Wednesday the day before she was meant to go into the surgery um she fell over and she couldn’t get up again so my dad phoned an ambulance for her and she just got taken into the ward a day earlier and she was kind of fine she was all good she was still very weird she was still very childlike she was regretting quite a lot and yes that night we got a phone call that she was in the high dependency unit and um she um her brain tumour had hemorrhaged and they were kind of just looking after her for a bit and they think that she’ll still be able to get the surgery and we went through and saw her and kind of chatted with her and and whilst I was in there I was like this isn’t good she’s gonna die in here and and afterwards I explicitly remember my dad and brother in the car ride home going oh no she’s fine we’ve seen dying people before she’s not dying and I was going she’s definitely dying and then the next day when we went in we got told that um um she was dying but her kidneys had shut down she would need she was just her whole body was failing her and she was no longer conscious so she lasted a couple of more days and then yeah that was that so it was all very fast we had some heads up but it was all very very quick um so this was this scan is the scan of um when she was initially brought into hospital and they found that this was the discovery scan and my parents knowing how curious I am got a picture of it to show me they were like this is what it looks like Caitlin thank you very much I do appreciate this um and I know like I’ve used my mum a lot in my art already like in the past you guys close yeah very close I’ve got this is um I’ve got a bust like a moderate bust of my mum’s um naked torso just in my house okay so yeah she was just we were very close we were like best friends and um she was always 100 like with my art and stuff she was like oh no you should totally do this Caitlin and I was like oh I want to do this bust thing but it’s going to be difficult to do myself and she’s like well just use me Caitlin do that and I’m like okay cool and she was like I’ll lie on the floor and you can pour all this really heavy liquid on top of me and I’m like sure thank you yeah yeah she was just headfirst into it all so amazing yeah you would not be convincing me to do that she obviously was very brave as well yeah she was um so I’m just looking at these uh we’ve got these little zines that you’ve created uh it’s just imagine a an A3 bit of paper that’s been very carefully folded up to create a small little booklet um these been printed but they’re covered in um sort of hand-drawn illustrations and handwritten notes and various um you know very very distinct and different illustrations and styles what inspired you to to take the the zine form I’ve been involved with zines on and off for all my life and I’ve never seen anything like this this is really quite incredible thank you um I don’t really know what got me into it I think I was I thought I really like zines and I think they were a very cool way to make art accessible um because they’re cheap to make so therefore cheap to sell um and I know a lot of kind of like my work can be expensive because of the time and the materials and all of that um so I kind of wanted to do that but I also feel like it’s something that you can take away and keep private um because I have a lot of people that see my work that say I really resonate with that but actually I don’t know if I want it up on my wall to remind me every day and so this is something that can you can look at and then you can put it in a drawer and you can put it away and you can breathe and you can kind of do what you need to do and you don’t need to be constantly reminded about that um I’m going to come back to this that idea in a minute but you want to just read this is the first one I’ve seen yeah this is a cover of that so the first on the cover it says grief a zine about death grief and why life is fucking unbearable and it’s got a little rabbit drawn on it like a cartoon rabbit and some teardrops and crosses yeah and and what sort of things do you cover in that um so in this this one’s all about grief it’s about um kind of my relationship about it I think I’ve got things like I need saved from this pain and stuff and kind of it’s my story and my family’s story but then I’ve also got like what do I do section because I know when like I’ve been faced with this I’ve been like what what am I what’s life gonna be like what do I do from here and actually the answer is you do whatever the fuck you can do and you just try and get through it um but I wanted that to be very clear and you need to be gentle with yourself and that you need to endure it even though it’s awful you need to do it there’s also a poem in it um by Andrea Cohen the committee weighs in um which is a beautiful poem right it um it’s I tell my mother I’ve won the noble prize again she says which discipline this time it’s a little game we play I pretend I’m somebody she pretends she isn’t dead and I just think it’s a beautiful poem and I think it’s also a very nice way to think about how you endure and what you do to get through yeah and it is quite universal um but also almost a taboo um and to sort of talk about these things and want to restrict it to grief that you know there’s all sorts of um you know difficulties in life they want to go on of a better term and an artist and creativity and really the core thesis of this whole podcast is that this stuff is a good way of dealing with stuff and do you find after you know doing any of these pieces these scenes and stuff do you feel you know you’ve lifted yourself a bit like you’ve exercised some of those definitely so that’s that’s what got me into art in the first place was I was mentally very unwell as a teenager um I was in the mental health services I’ve been sectioned a couple of times uh I’d made attempts on my life and everything I was very not well um and I kind of used art then as a way to get everything out so talking about my mother I have a memory of us was buying a massive canvas and going into like the garden and just throwing ink and everything on it and just stamping on it and stabbing it and doing what we needed to do to get all of the aggression and upset out um and kind of since then that’s grown in me so I’ve always taken it with me and I went on to do it at college and I was like oh but art needs to be pretty pictures now that I’m doing this in like college or whatever and actually it doesn’t it can still be like a throw up so I’ve got some paintings here the blue ones you are meant to be here and let me see you again which was very soon after mum passed that I did those and I was still working in my spare bedroom at home and there was there’s still paint on the ceiling and walls because I just had um a little moment to myself and let everything out and had a cry and did what I needed to do um and kind of yeah I find it’s it’s a great way even the more controlled pieces it’s a great way that I can visualize what I’m feeling because part of me can accept that I don’t feel good but then it doesn’t actually mean anything unless I can see it or name it and I can’t ever name it without fully talking it through but I can also paint it out or art it out in some form um so I can now see it and I know that’s what that is and actually I could do without what I want I can talk it away and never look at it again I can get rid of it or I could put it on show and say this is how people feel in life at times yeah and and so you know it said that um art is is emotional is made solid which I think is completely right and and and it couldn’t be more um present in the studio it’s an interesting point you made about um I like this piece of art but I’m not sure I could have it on my walls and it’s a problem I’ve had quite a lot possibly for quite a few different reasons I’ve usually got kind of quite scary like themes or people staring out of my paintings and and you sort of think well there’s this picture of this zombie staring lady and you think well I can see why you don’t want her staring down at you while you’re eating your dinner in your dining room but also I think I’ve sort of shied away a bit in um in terms of putting too much of my emotions into my work um partly because I think it’s quite there’s quite a skill to it um especially without making it sort of press or um like seeming like um attention seeking but also um in terms of yeah people people don’t really want that on their walls and I did a lot of thinking about this because I’m like everyone listens to Amy Winehouse, Kurt Cobain stuff you know there’s sad music everywhere from people who who died um you know in their in their prime and and you’re still listening to that sad song so what’s wrong with this sad painting and I think it’s because that sad song is on now when I want it and then it’s gone away when I don’t want it and the painting on the wall is there all the time unless you decide to take it up and down which is not really how people think about art and uh so I find that a bit frustrating but also I totally get it and so how do you find that that that sort of um that that paradox that collision between you know emotional art and and you know art as decor really when it comes down to it? I think it’s difficult I’m like I remember having a conversation with my partner that was like but I don’t understand it because if I connect with something then of course I’d want it on my wall because I’ve made a connection with that and this is my space and my partner was like yeah I get that Caitlin but if it’s something that you’re not ready to accept or if it’s if it’s something that like is not who you are like I I’m very I’m very honest about everything about myself um and I don’t mind having something up that’s like oh I feel shit because actually that’s a part of living um but some people like to live their little happy lives and live in that bubble and they get sad but then they’re like actually I just allow that for like five minutes and then I put that away again um I think I’ve been slowly getting a little bit more into trying to make make it a bit more pretty um but I kind of do it in a way that’s linked so I’ve got the two flower pieces there that’s kind of a pink painting on paper um with text and kind of in the background of it and it’s got one of them’s got daisies on it and the other one is irises or violets um and that’s because the daisies there’s mum’s birth flower and the irises violets is my dad’s and I lost my dad last year as well um so these paintings are about kind of nightmares and stuff that you get from grief and it’s about my parents um but actually I’ve put some pretty flowers on there that do link because it’s their birth flowers but people go they’re very pretty flowers so um and they are and so I’m looking at the painting now up here it’s sold yeah magnificent I’ve made good money out of that um it’s like a teddy bear um with a moon and it’s got let me see you again and to the moon and back in some handwritten um text and I could see that um that could that could apply to you missing your kid who’s gone to university or something right and in fact this one with you I’m meant to be here so I sort of feel like on one hand I know I think I know what these mean I certainly get an idea because I know you but I think other people would would not maybe take that away from it and I think that’s what’s powerful is you know there’s these are not um whimsical paintings you know they’re clearly serious and it’s expressive but you could read actually probably a broadly positive messaging yeah I think so I think that’s part of the reason why I like having a snippet of text as well because people can read it so differently and it can give so many different kind of answers um and if I keep kind of the text as vague as possible then it can fit into other people’s lives um so I know with the you were meant to be here they’ll let me see you again to the moon and back um I had somebody ask me if I’d had a miscarriage and I was like I have not but that’s very interesting that that’s where that goes for you with the weakness people can slot themselves into it yeah and I I’ve talked about this quite a lot in that when when this first started happening to me um I was like no no you’ve got it wrong you know I mean let me correct you it’s not about the thing you just said and and then I was like well no wait no it’s not like that at all that that person has superimposed their own story they’ve taken the wrong thing away they’ve they’ve added to the artwork they’ve made it something new and there’s always a little part of me that’s like no but you understand that I was you know feeling like this and feeling like that it’s good if people know that and they can relate to it but also it’s not a deal breaker and and in fact for me it enriches the piece and um and I think in terms of sort of putting your emotions out there um you’ve got to you’ve got to also let go of them and this goes back to your point about sort of making emotions solid as a way of almost putting them on the shelf I give this emotion to you but this emotion means something different and so so last year or maybe the last year has been quite challenging yeah um probably an understatement but I also find myself sitting in a studio yeah in a in a in a in a the creative exchange is like a hub for um creatives in in uh Scotland um you you got a grant for this I got a grant for the studio um which is kind of paid for a few quite a few months actually but kind of the shared studio space that I have um and it’s been really great and along with doing that comes up other opportunities so then I could take part in Persia Open Studios or the markets they’re in this building or I’ve actually just been accepted for an exhibition downstairs in July so yeah the last few years have been really difficult but I’ve got so much out of the last year as well with this space and actually even just the perspective of I just need to do what I want to do and I need to do what makes me happy so I’m going to sit in this room and I’m going to make myself little paintings but I enjoy it wholeheartedly I mean it it reads like a a bit of a novel in a sense so we’ve got the first second third act here and um and hopefully this is this is the happy ending no writing off into the sunset but yeah I mean you’re so uh lucky to have this um but I wouldn’t wish what you’ve been through on anyone at all but you said your dad died as well yeah so he died in November last year so it was six months after mum um and not a clue what happened he he was a musician so he had just been away to Holland for a week gigging um and he’d come back and he got COVID um and I was like well I’m not gonna come around and see him because I don’t want COVID you can suffer on your own um on the Saturday he tested positive and then on the Monday he wasn’t answering any of my phone calls um so I went around and me and my brother were banging on the doors like just thinking that he was unwell in bed and my brother even climbed up to his bedroom window and knocked on it and there was no sign to be got the police around and he was just found in bed um so the coroner’s report just said COVID they didn’t do an autopsy because because COVID so yeah that was very unexpected totally okay yeah well um my condolences well interestingly my my unease response to this brings me straight on to my next point and uh I think you know neurodivergent people autistic people grieve very differently um and also we have our challenges with uh social interactions it’s always more comfortable with me talking about difficult issues with autistic people because they don’t look at me like I’m nuts when I don’t respond in the way that I’m supposed to and generally I don’t know what to say right and and I’m not good at this and I won’t pretend to be I’ll try my best I don’t want to offend anyone but um you know I just wanted to sort of revisit uh you know how your neurodiversity is neurodivergence has sort of affected your journey and whether you think it you know I can see that it probably contributed to some of your problems and I can also see that it’s a big driver in terms of your you know positive creative output um I don’t know so I was diagnosed as autistic when I was like 14 and I was like well that’s not true that’s a lie because I’m not like incredibly disabled by this experience so that’s clearly not true using making that up as an excuse because I was unwell and I was like that’s that that’s the reason you suspect for me not going to school because I didn’t attend high school it definitely contributed a lot because I did not have formal education because of the fact that going to school was an overwhelming experience for me and I didn’t realize at the time that’s what that was but looking back I’m like actually all those times I did that and that and that that was clearly because it was autistic and overwhelmed so actually the professionals were correct and they can do that sometimes um uh yeah so I think it’s contributed a lot to that it’s contributed to kind of how I fit in the world sometimes I feel really awkward so what you were saying about not knowing what to say if somebody gives me condolences I’m like yeah well it’s fine and then it’s like well actually it’s not fine but then like I don’t know what to say to that someone walks up and say how you’re doing Caitlin and you’ll give them four minutes worth of monologue about how crap your day’s been or something yeah really I’m like I don’t know what to say I’ll just say whatever comes to my head at the time um but it’s also been it’s been weirdly a blessing to kind of have it or have the label for sure because sadly it gives me a lot more opportunities in the art world because I’m like applying for things and I’m like well I’m autistic and mentally I’m well and my life’s gonna shit and then like well you deserve to have this grant then for the studio and I’m like well I don’t really deserve it more than anybody else does but I will accept that and I will use this word as a kind of play to to do what I need to do so but it does it I don’t know it it gives and it takes in its own way there are days that I can’t come in because um I really struggle with the wind so if it’s really windy outside I really can’t cope like sensory wise with it so I’m like well actually I can’t come into the studio today because it’s really windy and it’s gonna make me want to scream and I’ve got other things that make me want to scream so this is too much screaming for me to be in public yeah um but then in the flip side it’s like well it gives me the space to be able to actually concentrate on this fully and to also not have any boundaries in place when I do it I think I think it really helps that I’m autistic to the fact that I can just spew all this out because there’s no social boundary in place I’m not thinking about what will this like for other people be like for the people look like to other people yeah I’m just like this is my truth yeah I’ve uh I used to find other people in my head when I was in my um in my studio or whatever and it really I found it really crippling um because I would be like well is anyone gonna love this what is this crap why am I doing this no one’s ever going to want to look at this and on the flip side I was saying well I only do this uh for sort of for therapy so why does it matter whether anyone likes it or not and I’ve got this point now where I’m so annoyed by that voice in my head I’ve started to just film everything like works in progress any old crap and stick it on YouTube it’s like just get out there because it’s like a nice nexusism of demons um and you can’t have people in your head when you’re creating it’s such an impediment because also it’s nonsense as well so many times I’m like oh this is crap this thing I’m making someone sees it and goes that’s absolutely incredible and you know you make up what people say in your head and then the reality is that’s not what they think at all yeah well even with referring back to the it’s too much thing I did that and I was like that’s mental how’s anybody going to look at that and go that’s art that’s that’s worth money but then actually when I put it up I had so many good reactions to that yeah yeah I love it it’s like it’s a bit side tumbly like a tiny little side comp you know side tumbly yeah the weeds thing it’s the one with the massive canvases where it just scribbles bits on it and I sort of see that that sort of um parallel between sort of um doodles and writing and in your work it I don’t I don’t think they’re comfortable on many levels not least because that’s like uh 20 centimeters across and is it like 20 feet across but um it does evoke that a little bit for me and and and there’s the um insects so last time I was here so I’m looking at a painting that has some handwriting up on the back there’s almost been sort of smudged out and then a little little spider that I don’t know if I think that’s creepy or not I kind of call him robo spider I think he looks like he’s made up of like excessive like excess bits of metal in the workshop yeah it’s almost kind of endearing and and then when I was in here before didn’t you have like a load of slugs yeah so I do have loads of tiny slugs um some with fairy wings some with like pride flags and stuff like that yeah see spiders I’m all right with spiders they’re useful animals and they don’t bother me that much slugs I really can’t cope with um but yours were actually quite cute thank you the wise slugs I don’t know I I think partly I really started liking them because I was like nobody else seems to like them and somebody has to like them so I was like I’ll be that person and then kind of what I’ve learned about them or I guess how I’ve grown as a human as well that I’m like I’ve just got so much like empathy for these little creatures that just they only come out when it’s dark and when it’s wet and they’re just living their little lives and then I think it was a couple weeks ago I was like well actually they’re just little artists as well because they have the little slime trails and actually they paint beautiful glistening pictures which show but it also shows their journey as well which is like what I’m doing so like in my paintings little silk trails yeah it’s I don’t know if I think about it I started to like them because nobody likes them but then I’ve just the more I think about them the more I’m like they’re just little guys and they are very curious like if you have a snail or a slug in your hands they will I have I’ve had them like look up at my face like who are you and I’m like just a person just trying my best but um they’re very cool I think and also just like lots of things about them like how they reproduce is very cool I don’t know if we’re going to go into that yeah yeah go look at hot people yeah I doubt I’m going to start finding slugs and deering but you know certainly made me feel a little less disturbed by them um the other the other thing that happened last time I came here is I think we we spent about 20 minutes talking about medication yeah that was like oh god knows it was people in the next room what they must have thought when we were comparing meds because I take about well that’s probably five six seven pills most days not every day and I mean that’s seven different flavors of pill I have um you know my my ADHD meds I’m on the quick release so I take about between six and eight of those a day and then all the other pills and uh I think we were just laughing about all of the you know the drugs that we’ve prescribed um because you got it right yeah you do I think I think it’s funny I also think it’s really odd how quickly they can prescribe drugs as well though I so I got diagnosed with fibromyalgia um this year um and there’s like two medications that you can take or something one of them’s pre-gabble and the other one I can’t remember its name but it’s an antidepressant it’s a tricylic and I’m already on a tricylic anti-depressant so like well that means you can’t take that so you you just got to hope pre-gabble in that it’s like this is all so weird why can’t I don’t know it all just feels bizarre I mean pre-gabble in is has got serious street value like it’s proper proper stuff I joke that my bedside table is like worth so much money god yeah and I’ve got my ADHD D-med to dexamphetamines which gave me street value and when I go to the the chemist to pick them up they have to get the pharmacist to take them out of the safe yeah I just think it I think it’s part of our personality that we we just find it funny and you sort of find that with anyone with chronic illnesses or conditions or whatever that um there’s always a funny side to it yeah because you got a laugh right I think as well like when life deals you maybe like a non-typical hand um with like chronic illness neurodiversity mental health you it’s like that has to be funny yeah you know what I mean it’s like there’s I don’t I don’t know how to word it but it’s almost like your your reality is so different and shifts from the typical that actually it’s all just a bit ridiculous at times yeah well what is comedy is is is calling out either ridiculous things or creating ridiculous situations why is multi-pipe and funny because it it’s bizarre but there’s there’s a flavor of reality in there and and I think it’s the same and I also think that autistic people generally have delayed emotional responses um and and so you know for a long time people told me really bad news or something I would laugh because it would be like yeah cool because I need that as well well done like thanks yeah cheers I have such a strong memory of my mom saying that her aunt died and me laughing on her face as a kid she was like Caitlin you need to leave the room right yeah yeah yeah I mean it it’s just I think a lot of autistic people have been through that and you have to learn the appropriate behavior because it doesn’t come naturally to us it doesn’t mean we’re not we’re not feeling pain or grief or whatever it’s just that you know when my dad died when I was like 20 um I didn’t grieve for like four months I just got straight back into life and was like you know what what is happening I don’t seem to care but I did care and and it affected me for decades after that not because I bottled it up just because I I processed it yeah and and I know that now but I felt very guilty about that you know I mean um but I know now that my response was normal to me and uh and you sort of have to get used to a different normal yeah you do you totally do because like for the night dad died we had to get um like the police chief to come around because it was outside of working hours or whatever and they were discussing like the removal of getting him downstairs and everything like that and I was there like just chucking out the window he’s not gonna feel that and they were like looking at me like what the fuck yeah and my brother was like she’s it’s okay this is just Caitlin or like we were told by the police what happened I panicked cried for like a second and then I turned to my brother and I was like oh my god we’re like um oh my god we’re like all of a twist now that was what I said because we were orphans and he was like what the fuck Caitlin let’s go have a cigarette and I was like I would love that actually yeah thank you yeah yeah you just react differently yeah yeah our dad has been my little sister has had our dad’s ashes like what’s that 30 years has been dead and she hasn’t they just sit on that marble piece and and that’s that’s her way of processing you know I mean okay so I’m going to bring this to a close this has been really really interesting and fascinating and your openness is is quite disarming again something we have in common and I hope that people you know sort of understand and can relate to how we see and how we process the world and so firstly what are your plans for the next year so I have a less exciting year than last year yeah definitely have a chill year um I think I just want to make I’ve got an exhibition in July which I’m working towards which is I’m very excited about I’ve got lots of fun ideas involving installation type situation um and apart from that I’m just gonna see what happens I’d like to apply for more exhibitions I want to be seen more I think and just yeah talk to folk as well I enjoy like like this session like I think I want to do more things like this yeah you definitely should note that will I’ll be putting on some exhibitions at some point so maybe we’ll exhibit together again that would be good um and where can people find you so you can find me on instagram facebook if you type in wild eye art you’ll be able to find me there I’ve also got a website which is wildeyeart.co.uk I think and um you can find my email address there I’m putting together a newsletter and stuff too so if you contact me in any form I’ll write your info down and add it to the list and what’s the significance of wild eye art um such a good question I I when I first started this as like a business I was like oh well I need to be like all the TikTok people and I need to have like a branded name and I was like I don’t like my name because um I’m non-binary and I was like I wasn’t sure if I was going to keep Caitlin as a name and everything I have eyes a lot in my work and I have for years um and I think my work’s a bit wild at times um and it’s art it’s a wild eye art. There you go well that was that I mean honestly that was about as lucid an explanation as anyone ever gives me yeah the last person I interviewed when I asked him you know about his art he he basically couldn’t explain it to me and it took him about 10 minutes to not explain it to me so um you’re in good shape nice okay brilliant well thank you for your time maybe you’ll come back on again and we’ll get an update but otherwise I’ll see you in the exhibit at some point thanks for having me thank you for coming