Mind-Gardening

An illustration based on The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry.
This was one of a series of drawings I sold and in return the buyers donated to charities.
Donating to charity and helping other people has been shown to help alleviate anxiety and depression.

Yesterday I heard about someone who fell deep into depression and never managed to get out again. Usually, I would never post about mental health. But that conversation, coupled with other things that are going on at the moment, has made me want to write this.

Everything here is just what I personally found useful. Everyone is different and deals with problems using different tools. I had very bad depression at one point but the main problem I've always had is anxiety, so it might be that the things I found helpful are more suited to anxiety than depression.

This article is really good, and echoes advice I've read in other books. In a nutshell: It's ok to do something and not do it perfectly; Forgive yourself; Wait to worry, and Help other people.

Therapy did not help me, personally, for any length of time, but there is an NHS-approved range of books, and for me, that was a better option.

I use audiobooks a lot - they kind of smother the anxiety, and are really helpful with insomnia. Ones I personally like are Stephen Fry reading the Harry Potter books; Carl Sagan reading Pale Blue Dot; Douglas Adams reading Dirk Gently's Detective Agency. BBC Radio 4 have some programmes that are perfect for this, and they're available online, like The Living World.

Bertrand Russell's book The Conquest of Happiness was the first thing that gave me any kind of lever to use against anxiety. Parts of it are dated, but I've never read any book that's made more of a difference to me. Funnily enough Derren Brown's Tricks of the Mind also had some good advice in it, and Richard Wiseman's 59 Seconds.
 
Naturally, as someone who draws for a living, I use art to some extent too. In 59 Seconds, Wiseman talks about the research showing how the colour green can help diminish stress. Maybe that's why I chose this beautiful Garas François print for my sitting room. I draw scenes that comfort me and cheer me up, like the one below of a park. You don't need to be good at drawing or painting to do this. It can be a way of going to a nice place in your mind.

A windy park in Autumn, with a dog running and a man flying a dragon-kite.
Drawing this let me take a break from a very dark January day.

I wrote this post, and then didn't know what title to give it. I chose 'Mind-Gardening' because that's sort of what I try to do. My mind can grow a lot of unpleasant things in it, and the methods listed above are the tools I use to weed them out, and make it a comfortable place to be.

Hating & Then Loving Jane Austen

I cannot talk of books in a ball-room; my head is always full of something else

I discovered Jane Austen via the 1995 BBC dramatisation of Pride & Prejudice, which I first watched on New Year's Eve, 2001. I waved my boyfriend off to a party and said I'd probably follow on later. Instead I watched all six episodes, and the next day I watched them all again. I was so overwhelmed by love of all things Pemberley that I changed my route to work so I could walk past a carpet shop called Darcy's. I was smitten.

And yet, I'd been introduced to Jane Austen years before, and had thought her a bore. The house I grew up in was full of books and among them was a Complete Collection of Jane Austen, three inches thick and in binding the colour of warm mud. I think I opened it once and quickly closed it again. Unlike the Complete Collection of the Brontë Sisters (also about three inches thick, but binding the colour of pond scum). I knew passages of Wuthering Heights by heart by the time I was thirteen.

Wuthering Heights had a song, though. A really good song. That song sustained me when I came across words like 'penetralium' where Emily Brontë could very well have said 'inside the house'. I never begrudged Emily her long words. In fact I liked them.

Pride & Prejudice did not have a song. Added to which, in school we were told we ought to like Jane Austen, so I immediately suspected her of great wrong doing. We were given only passages of her work to read in school, but I read them resentfully, with the aim of proving to myself how awful she was.

It was strange to think back to that when, in my early twenties, I worked my way through her novels, reading and re-reading them, and illustrating scenes from them just to enjoy and savour them more. I think maybe her books are a little bit like olives or pungent cheese - you have to find them in your own time, when your tastes are receptive. And coincidentally, they tend to go well with a little glass of wine.

He danced only four dances! I am sorry to pain you -- but so it was

Sketchbook: Werewolves

A lot of the time, I draw so I can imagine things more clearly. Lately I've been reading about wolves and coming up with stories about werewolves, so naturally I've been doodling them too.

Wondering what a group of werewolves would call themselves.

Posh werewolves would be differently affected by the condition than poor werewolves, I think.

Werewolves when it's not the full moon.

I don't know why I assume they like smoking jackets so much. (I like smoking jackets and think they're very practical & would save on heating bills - I think smoking jackets should be relaunched in an age of sustainable home heating).

A plain old wolf, wondering why he never got a smoking jacket.

Neighbours wondering what's going on over there in that big house each full moon.

Right. I have to press publish now and leave it at that, because my dog is howling for me. Really.

All pictures (c) Sheena Power.

Goodbye Facebook!

 

I have been a heavy user of Facebook. I've had a love/hate relationship with it for almost ten years. As I work from home, I don't have those office colleagues you can turn to and have a light bit of banter, and Facebook was a kind of substitute. It also seemed a good way of displaying my work, as I am pretty terrible at marketing.

However.

I've known for a long while that Facebook has not been good for me, in much the same way that it isn't good for a lot of other people. I tried using it only for my work page, but once I'd logged in, a half-hour would evaporate and I'd find I'd been staring at gifs of dancing burgers, or whatever the current meme is.

The recent scandal about Cambridge Analytica is both shocking and unsurprising. I downloaded my Facebook data and found a list of advertisers who had my contact details. I read the profile Facebook had compiled of me, my interests, beliefs and political leanings. When any of my Facebook friends accessed an app, some of that information would have leaked out.

All in all, I think it's time to leave Facebook. I'll be blogging far more regularly, if you'd like to follow this blog. I'll be posting times of markets, news of retailers who stock my work, and new and old designs. You can see all my designs on my website, and contact me that way too. You can also contact me on Twitter.

Thanks to everyone who followed my Facebook page. I really appreciate your interest & support, it has meant a huge deal to me.

Sheena

Maia, a Spring Goddess

Maia, Goddess of Growth

This is an illustration from my 2017 calendar. It's thought that May gets its name from the Roman goddess, Maia.

The Greeks also had a Maia, mother of the god Hermes. It could be that the Roman goddess was based on the Greek one, or it could be that there were originally two, and their stories mingled together.

I based the woman's hair and t-shirt on this Greek vase, which shows Maia and her son.

 

To create the image, I drew the figure in black biro (this is my favourite medium) and colouring pencil. I made the background using buttons, dried lavender, rose petals and colouring pencil on a recycled green card stock. Then I digitally superimposed the figure on the background.

I sell this as an A6 greetings card, printed onto 100% post-consumer recycled card stock and paired with a recycled envelope. If you bought this in a shop or at a market, it will have been protectively packaged in what looks like cellophane, but is actually a 100% biodegradable material made from cornstarch.