General – Page 4 – Emily van Lidth de Jeude

Art for Change: When Connection and Conversation Are the Outcome

I could see him drifting across the polished concrete floor of the convention centre, blue-jacketed arms spread into a perfect reflection of the very wide smile that punctuated his neatly-trimmed ebony beard. He was studying the very sad-looking portrait of my recently-divorced brother that adorns the train of the gown I had on display. He circled the gown slowly, hands splayed as if to catch every bit of story it offered, taking it in with sparkling eyes and smiling, smiling, until he looked into mine, and said, "did you make this?"

Artist Emily van Lidth de Jeude sits in her wheelchair, wearing black leggings, a short red dress, a burgundy jacket, and a grey face mask. She has two curly fake hair buns, and is gesturing with her hands as she speaks to a dark-bearded man in grey pants and a blue suit jacket. Some of Emily's wearable art pieces are visible in the background.

"Yes," I answered. "It's called '(dis)robe: Nursing Gown'. Tell me about your big smile!" And he told me he felt seen. We talked for a long while about how crippling our societal expectations can be for people of all genders. We talked about how trapped the painted man looked, even though he held the mannequin by a dog-collared lead. We talked about how the patriarchy crushes all but the wealthiest people–it was never about men versus women; it's just a few billion pawns fighting for survival under the shoe of someone much more powerful. And what if we were to work together, instead?

I just finished a four-day stint of exhibiting some of my wearable art pieces at the Art Vancouver fair. This gave me opportunity to reflect quite a bit on why I do what I do. My purpose as an artist hasn't changed, but it has deepened and I suppose I feel it more intensely, now. I'm here to connect people with each other, with their own authenticity, and with a more equitable, sustainable future. My art is a conversation-opener. Conversations like the one I had with this blue-jacketed man are the cornerstone of social change. They're the space where the change takes root in our hearts.

See those two people talking at the back of the image below? They're talking. Their hearts are making change. During this show I also spoke with many children who wondered what was "going on with the boobies" on that Nursing Gown, or whether they could touch the insects on the Gaia Gown, and I saw children pull their mothers around the skirt to identify the flowers they knew. People wondered where they might wear such unusual dresses, or why anybody would want to. "Definitely not to work!" One of them exclaimed.

The artist, Emily van Lidth de Jeude, sits in her wheelchair, wearing the Hospital Gown project she created. Hospital Gown is a wearable art piece covered with selfies of over 300 Long Covid patients, and a train (which she's sitting on) covered with many of the most common symptoms of Long Covid. In the distance, two more of Emily's wearable art pieces can be seen, on display.

The main piece of this winter's artistic journey for me was the Long Covid gown, '(dis)robe: Hospital Gown' (image at the top). It involved over 300 selfies contributed by Covid long-haulers from around the world, transferred to an altered donated hospital gown. From the back of the gown, trailing from a drawing of my son's hands (because when my Long Covid was at its worst, he used to help me walk by gently pushing my back), was a hospital-blanket train covered in some of the most common symptoms of Long Covid. These are the symptoms that millions of people worldwide live with every day, often confined to home or bed, invisibly. So the train is supported by a wheelchair that is also partially hidden. There's symbolism in everything I do, and this was my opportunity to give a voice to the millions of people who, like me, live mostly invisibly with Long Covid.
And when I got too exhausted (shaky, blurred vision, heart palpitations) from wearing the gown and talking to people, I could just step back and sit in that wheelchair. A purpose-built wearable art piece! This is what comes of making art that truly deals with my own personal experience.

I invited many people from the Long Covid community to attend, so it was no surprise that this was a conversation piece for long-haulers, nurses and other health professionals. Some people even came to delight in finding their own faces on the gown! But it was also a chance for us all to be visible to others–many of whom had never realized Long Covid was happening in the world. Education is change-making.

This weekend was, for me, an opportunity to see other people becoming; changing, evolving, and questioning themselves. It was an opportunity to hug so very many lovely souls, and to express gratitude for their thoughts and opinions. There were people just visiting from afar, people who came to support artist friends, and people who were also showing work at the fair, or working to organize. There were people who came just to buy a pretty painting, but ended up chatting about climate change, gender politics, and the healthcare system. My own display confronted people with sometimes-difficult topics, and yet they bravely engaged. This reminded me that while we sometimes want to hide from challenges, humans are mostly courageous, and generous with our intentions.

I was not the only artist there trying to change the world through art. Humanity is a great kaleidoscopic spectrum of beautiful people, reaching across so many circumstantial divides to connect and thrive. We're like all the network of roots, mycelium, compost and microorganisms in the forest floor: a vibrant bubbling potion of hope, and a foundation for continued life. In following our own paths with so many tentative, compassionate feelers, we're finding our way.

Playgrounds, Gaza, and a Forest: How Competition Impedes Prosperity

A long-haired boy in a long-sleeved brown shirt and black and white capri pants stands on a bar, half-way up a swing-set, looking wistfully off into the distance. His sister, in an orange skirt, turquoise shorts, and a shirt that is obscured by the angle of the photo, swings on a trapeze, beside him. Her feet stick out into the centre of the photo, in the foreground, and her long braid trails behind her.

One damp autumn day, I crossed the dirt and wood-chip playground to the swings, where I saw a girl a couple of years younger than I was, and also the bottom of her grade's social heap, swinging on the best swing. You know the best swing? It's the one that is for some reason not spun up out of reach by the older kids, and the most visible to the playground supervisor, so other kids don't bother trying to haul you out of it. During those years, I spent all recesses and lunch hours either hiding on the bluffs, up in a tree, or firmly glued to that swing and swinging fiercely back-and-forth, back-and-forth, daring people to come near me with a glare they never noticed. But this day, this younger girl's thick brown hair flew back-and-forth, back-and-forth over her raincoated shoulders. I stood at the pole of the swing-set and ground my boots into the dirt. When nobody was looking, I told her passing face that I was magic and would turn her into a rock if she didn't get off and give me the swing.

When I was a kid I was near the bottom of the social heap. The kids who hurt me the most were also hurt the most by their parents, or by other kids at the school. It's normalized, in our culture, to turn and dish out to someone else a cruelty that was served to us. School, career-building, politics, capitalism–they're all just games of getting ahead of others, and put us in a position where we feel that "getting ahead" is the same as "prosperity". It's an illusion, but our longstanding capitalist social structure leads us to believe in it at the cost of vision and community.

Israel is flexing its playground seniority in Gaza. It feels heartless to compare genocide to playground bullying, but I want to point out that in accepting what we see as insignificant cruelty in our privileged day-to-day as a necessary cost of getting ahead, we also pave the way to accept greater and greater atrocities. I understand from my playground experience how easy it feels to commit some lesser act of cruelty against another person when I've been hurt. So by extrapolation, I get that maybe if your people has been persecuted for thousands of years, and even in living memory was the pointed victim of horrific acts of genocide, it might seem less than horrible for (some members) of that people to commit genocide against the next victim down the chain. I mean, aren't we all just making gains by stepping up upon the backs of those just below us in rank, privilege, or esteem?

Well no–not everybody is doing that. Some of us from every race, religion, and social ranking in the world are in fact trying very hard not to be that kind of monster. Some of those in my circles who are most vocally supporting freedom for Palestinians are my Jewish friends. Because fighting to get or stay on top of a social pyramid does not equal prosperity! Because some of us learned this important lesson in childhood.

Back in my elementary school playground… I have never forgotten the look of horror on that girl's face, and my triumph at seeing her run away, so I could get to safety on that swing. My triumph was the worst. I remember the sick feeling in my stomach, after she left. I didn't know where she had run to, or who might be kicking her, feeding her dirt, or holding her down and whispering the most vile threats in her ears. I remember thinking we looked rather similar and maybe she could have been my friend if I hadn't been so desperate to get that swing. I felt that getting the swing gave me safety, but it also took away hers. I remember that my triumph came with a horrible cost to my feeling of righteousness, and that year I became one of those people who knows better than to pass the bullying on to the next rung down the ladder. Sometime after that I bravely spoke a few words to my bullied-mate in the classroom. We had a breath-holding competition. So for a couple of minutes we found common ground in an environment of terror and ladder-climbing, and I think in some small way we both learned to transcend the hierarchy of our class.

We can ALL learn from our mistakes. We can all look at our leaders and our cultural and personal privileges and refuse to make progress at the cost of others. Sure, we're trying to survive in what is, at its root, a culture of competition, and to some degree we have to participate in the status quo to survive. But we can also work to change it. Those of us with more privilege have more ability to effect change. We can change the ways we look at others; we can choose to befriend the people who make less money than we do, the people whose lashes lower when we speak to them; the people who seem least likely to improve our social status. We can look critically at our privilege and resources and belongings and ask ourselves what we actually need, and how we can change our lives and share the excess to achieve a social balance in our community. We can remind ourselves that a balanced community means prosperity for all.

Does prosperity mean a lack of suffering? Of course not. We're all going to die. We're all going to hurt. We're all going to lose loved ones, and health, and hope. But a balanced community is exactly the only thing that will sustain us through these challenges. And we can look to the ecology just outside our city limits for inspiration in achieving prosperity through social balance.

A tree in a forest. If a maple drops ten thousand seeds on the forest floor, all but a few hundred of those are likely to be eaten by insects, rodents and birds before they ever sprout, and of those that do sprout, most will be eaten as spring greens by the likes of deer, and others. And maybe five will grow to be saplings, and maybe zero will live to become trees, most years. Until one day the mother tree has crumbled under the weight of some winter snow and in the mess of her fallen limbs, one of last year's saplings will grow sheltered and become a tree, itself. But you know what? In all those years where not a single one of those seeds grew to maturity, that original tree fed the ecosystem around her, and reached her roots through the landscape to share nutrients with the neighbouring trees. All the other plants and animals' droppings and dead bodies fed the soil, and now that soil is rich with microbial life and nutrients, and that new maple tree will grow strong–not on the backs of all those it conquered, but in an ecology of giving and dying and growing. The maple tree has no fear of falling behind. She is a sanctuary for mosses, ferns and all kinds of insect, microbial and animal life–she is part of that life. She's just growing and giving and crumbling and feeding her ecology. And that is why she prospers. I want to learn some of that wisdom.

What if there was no fear of falling behind in human society? Would we carry, feed, and connect with each other; with our ecology? Would we relish those connections instead of conquering others? I feel like I've experienced this when I sing in community. When my own voice drowns away among the voices of others, but together we're a beautiful sound. I experience it when I play with children in the wilderness. We're each so insignificant in the big forest, but our play changes the landscape and we see the impact of our being there; we learn to play carefully. We learn that if we destroy the stream-bank, then the water downstream will be muddy, and then we'll have no clean water for drinking, anywhere. We learn that affecting anything (anybody) will have impacts on ourselves.

If my life depends on privilege gained through competition, and supported by people who aren't being supported by me, then when those people's lives falter, so do I. We can't build a pyramid to stand on, then rip out the stability of the base, and expect to keep standing on the top.

And from another perspective, when we've prospered exponentially at the cost of the ecosystem that supports us without honouring it, giving back to it, and living in harmony with it, the ecology we depend on is faltering underneath our ridiculous pyramid, and we're all beginning to discover what happens, then.

Our system of pyramid-climbing is not a strong one. A strong system is lateral. Like a forest, or a group of people singing. A strong system loses a limb and regrows to heal the wound. A strong system has no leaders, but many trusted and equal members, all giving instead of taking. Giving is not sacrifice, it's prosperity.

It's scary to think of not having enough (food, money, land, power, achievement, influence, etc.) In a hierarchical culture, "not enough" equals failure, threat; fear. For those near the bottom of the cultural pyramid in my community it means no shelter; no food. For those on the bottom in Gaza it means abject trauma every day. It means death. Is this an acceptable cost for my "getting ahead"? I don't want this kind of unstable throne. I don't want to support a global society that prospers on hierarchical oppression, because in that kind of culture, everybody is a potential pawn, or enemy. Everybody is unstable.

I want to transcend capitalism and find joy in uplifting others instead of uplifting myself at a cost to others. I want to stop prospering as an individual, and when I fall, I want to fall down in community, knowing that others will grow into my wounds. I want to be worth more than what I own or who bends under my feet. In a lateral community I will be worth the whole of us. I want the mirage of hierarchy to disappear and I want us all to be free.

Free Palestine.

Disinformation and Meanness: What is going on?!

A giant white bird flies upward off the canvas, semi-abstracted, belly in full view, head cut off by the top of the canvas, and feathers disintegrating into the red background, which fades away to black, at the bottom, mirroring the bird's small black feet, pulled tight against its tail. — *Escaping the Nest (middle of triptych), by Emily van Lidth de Jeude*

It just hit me that maybe ten years ago I was worried about the rise of misinformation on social media. I saw it once in a while; people posting things from known biased sources, or just stating information they assumed was correct but wasn’t. Extensive fact-checking became more necessary than I had felt it was, before, since even trusted sources seemed infiltrated with presumption and error. Or maybe I was just becoming more aware.

Recently, though, it feels like disinformation is the norm, and complicated with some serious cruelty. On the bigger social media groups I’m a part of (chicken-keeping, canning, foraging, mushrooms, birds, education, etc.) it’s just absolutely normal for somebody to post a question and receive 30–70% wrong answers. It seems people have just become accustomed to stating an uneducated guess as fact. (And seriously — for canning, foraging, mushrooms, chickens, and schooling, this can lead to disaster, for example when someone asks for ID on a poisonous mushroom, and half the responses say it’s edible, and most of the other half are phallus jokes.) And then there are the people berating each other, not just for being wrong, but for correcting the mistakes, as well. Or for totally unrelated things. Like when said phallus jokes become linked to anti-trans attacks. It gets awful out there.

THEN there’s the morality war. There is a propensity for people (mostly white men, I’m sorry to say), to stick their uneducated opinions into posts about LGBTQ2IA+, indigenous, children’s rights, women’s rights, and BIPOC issues… again, as facts. Many of these “facts” are colonial constructs held by our society because they keep white men in power (and because the rest of us think they ensure our continued prosperity). But many are now also just lies made up by conspiracy theorists (like all the supposed chemical, psychological and media conspiracies to make our kids gay or trans or supportive of minority rights…) Sure, there are many sides to every story, but some things are actually not happening. I’m not even getting into the massive quagmire of people in power (often leaders of large corporate enterprises, politicians and religious leaders) using minorities as stepping-stones to more power. Some of us use these crimes as security for our privilege, without ever questioning ourselves.

In my art life this takes shape as criticism and fear: Am I appropriating symbols that are proprietary to a marginalized group that I’m not a member of? Rainbow spectra and feathers were important in my work before I became aware of appropriation, and it’s been hard to sideline them, even though I know how important it is. Even harder was the bickering between artists and members of the LGBTQ2IA+ and BIPOC communities. Oh yeah, and the outright hate-filled rhetoric between some feminists of different stripes. These issues make communicating online really fraught, even without the added question of misinformation or disinformation.

What is going on?! Why is our culture disintegrating into this kind of nastiness and ignorance? As a long-time unschooling parent who notices the lack of this behaviour in the unschooling groups, it’s easy to feel like it might have some kind of relationship with our education system. Especially since unschooling mindset is one of curiosity, acceptance and learning, and unfortunately the compulsory, competitive nature of our school system can provoke a rebellion against curiosity and learning, as well as a propensity for bullying tactics. The rebellion against understanding and the bullying are apparent in a lot of the online attacks I’ve seen. But I think that, in the bigger picture, there’s a deeper reason. We’re experiencing a massive cultural shift. Our minds are opening. And that’s just messy.

We’re threatened from all angles as climate change changes every single foundation our cultures were built on (predictability of seasons, harvests, weather, migration, and therefore employment, finances, housing, healthcare, and even cultural norms). So in this state of growing societal panic, some people are trying to keep things as they were (ignoring the fact that the great majority of underprivileged people have already been suffering these unpredictabilities forever). Some are taking opportunities to fight for rights long-denied to them. Some, like me, are gleefully running headlong into the change, wanting to create a new and better world out of the chaos, and ALL of us are rather ungrounded in the process. There’s so much change, so much fear and threat, that we’re all just kind of scrabbling for understanding all the time. I guess it’s not surprising that a lot of people are confused about the facts, in this kind of chaos! I am too. Everything seems to take so much research now! And patience, tact, and caution! And in the rush of this change, and the feeling of urgency everywhere, it’s not surprising we don’t feel we have time to fact-check or to come to an understanding of the issues we’re talking about before making assumptions and proclamations.

So it’s frustrating, and sometimes even extremely upsetting, when people resort to cruelty because they feel threatened or inadequate in the face of such big unfathomable change. But it’s necessary that we remain patient and kind, reminding ourselves that these actions are a part of our societal growth. And I’m choosing to see it as a great sign that big change is happening. As a woman with many friends and family in marginalized communities, I’m glad to see my own and other people’s rights have a chance to be respected. As a person living on earth, I’m glad we are making changes that might make our future survivable! Maybe we can all take deep breaths and remind ourselves that everybody is confused and frightened. And maybe saying lots of wrong things is part of our process. We’re learning to learn and communicate! Real learning with an open heart and mind is how we will adapt to our new civilization. It’s how we will all grow to meet the challenge of a world none of us have lived in, before.

10 Ways to Save Humanity Even if You Can't March on Sept 15th

As the death-toll from Libya’s storm floods surpasses eleven thousand, and various hurricanes march their ways across the oceans, people all over the world are gearing up to March to End Fossil Fuels, tomorrow. (Find your city’s event on this map.)

A painting by artist Emily van Lidth de Jeude. Mostly white and grey; a kind of abstract landscape, maybe, with fiery grey in the distance. A jetty or log stretches from the foreground into the distance of what might be a lake, a sea or a plane, and a very tiny distorted human figure stands at the end of it, encircled by nothingness. — Not a Thing Between Me and You (detail) … Recent painting by Emily van Lidth de Jeude, in response to Neil Young’s song, “Overhead”. This painting deals with our compulsion to just keep going into an unknown future, together, even when we don’t know we’re not alone. It’s about courage.

But what if we can’t march? And even if we can, how are we going to propel this impetus into action? How are we going to actually save our future on this planet? (Let’s face it, we’re not going to another planet, and instead of talking about “our children’s future” now, we’re talking about our own.) We’ve got months or a couple of years to turn this around, and even if we do, storms like this are now here to stay. So what can we do about it?

Become resilient.
We can stop following the status quo, and learn to live differently than our youths and the media told us to. Learn to cook our own food. Learn to pivot our careers and plans and housing situations as needed, and without being traumatized. Adaptable creatures survive.
Make our kids resilient.
So you might know I usually write about unschooling. That was (and still is) my effort to raise resilient, independent, capable adults. And it worked! At 18 and 21, my kids are now living independently (together), paying their own way, and making changes for a better world.
Unschooling isn’t the only way to make our kids resilient. Any kind of freedom to explore and develop their own skills will help. As will encouraging schools to opt for explorative learning, wilderness education, and all the things that will help our kids be connected, creative, courageous, and resourceful. Those are the skills our kids will need to survive our new world.
Grow food.
Whatever we can do, whether it’s growing sprouts on our kitchen counters to save $10/week in veggies, or escaping the rat race to go whole-hog on a homestead — just do it. We can all (and yes I mean all) grow at least some of our food. This not only saves money (if we learn from someone else who’s doing it effectively and don’t fall for sales tactics for all the gadgets we don’t need), it also brings us closer to our food, giving us a deeper understanding of life, our bodies, our connection to the ecology we live in, and nutrition. It’s healthier for us (fresher food), and it’s also healthier for the environment, since everything we grow (sustainably) ourselves is something we don’t buy from the unsustainable agricultural industry.
Buy local.
For all those foods and other things we can’t grow or make, ourselves, we can buy local! I guarantee you there is somebody out there trying to get rid of a bunch of homegrown zucchinis or apples right about now. What if we paid them instead of a big supermarket chain? What if we bought from local farmers, builders, and creators instead of from the capitalist industries that are the root of climate change? This is a shift we can make.
Don’t buy! Boycott capitalism.
Buying local is one way of sidestepping the corporations who are doing the most damage, but buying less is an even better way. A big part of our problem is overpopulation, and then there’s overconsumption. We really don’t need all the stuff. We don’t need big houses. We don’t need big cars, we don’t need lots of clothing or school supplies or travel or household items. We don’t even need as much food as we currently consume, and we especially don’t need to be wasting as much food as we do through restaurant and supermarket refuse, and simple neglect at home. How many times do people go on a fabulous vacation and then declare they need a vacation from their vacation? What if we just took a local vacation in the first place — one that doesn’t displace people from rental accommodation, and that connects us with our homes in ways we hadn’t experienced, before? In the space that’s left without the things that we don’t *actually* need, we will learn to find convenience, fulfillment and joy. We will have space to keep building that resilience and resourcefulness I mentioned earlier.
Be happy with less.
Along with resilience and resourcefulness comes happiness. It is just plain so rewarding to grow my own food! I go out every day now and tend my chickens, weed a bit of veggie garden, eat some food right off the plants, and just generally revel in a lifestyle that I once found daunting. I feel empowered by my mended clothing in a way I don’t feel empowered by something brand new. I now have some serious disabilities, and learning to be resilient and resourceful has made me happy, similarly to how my job working with kids used to make me feel.
Love our local ecology.
Partly the joy I get is from being active in my local ecology (also similarly to when I worked with kids on wilderness exploration)! I have learned so much about how connected we are; am currently fascinated with the many types of wild bees and other insects that frequent my small yard, and with their life’s work and activities that all contribute to the diversity we depend on. How does this love save our world? By connecting us with it. If we love our ecology, we’ll know it better, and the more we know and love, the greater ability we’ll have to protect it. We need our ecology. If only for the simple reason that it feeds us and protects us from storms. That in its diversity it will recover when we finally do turn the trend of climate change around.
Love our neighbours.
We’ve got a couple of new neighbours recently. We’re making an effort to connect with them. You know why? Because when the power goes out, when a tree falls across the road, when someone’s pipes freeze or someone needs any kind of help at all — or just a hug, we will be there for each other. When the storms come, we’ll need each other.
Love our children.
Obviously. Because the hell that we’re going to experience pales deeply against the hell that our kids will know. If we love them, we need to save them.
Just love.
And when it’s all too much, when we’re succumbing to doubt and fear and a feeling that nothing we do could possibly be enough, we can love. If I’m going to die, I want to do it in the arms of someone who loves me. And more importantly, I’m far less likely to die early if I share a deep love. Our future and neighbours and children and the whole global population is more likely to thrive if we live a life of love instead of material acquisition.

Love is actually a hard thing to do. So I’ll tumble out of my list now, just to write a little about love. Love is a challenge. It’s like a great wave piling up behind us, saying …RUN! And can we do it? Can we keep going even when the wave is catching our ankles? Can we slog through the wash around our waists, grasping at the ungraspable wind, to haul ourselves out when the wave peters out, and get up and run again before the next wave comes? That’s love. It’s work. Neverending, challenging, heartbreaking impossible work. But it’s also the only thing that’s worth working for. Love is, in many ways, survival. When love (of a person, planet, dream, or future) compels us, we can access the resilience, courage, creativity, and resourcefulness needed to meet all the challenges. Climate change included.

So whether or not you can join a climate march tomorrow, do something. Something that will make you feel empowered and resilient. Something that will save us, tomorrow. And tomorrow? Do something again!

With love,
Emily

Smoke, Fire, Ashes, and Covering Everything With White

A mostly black and white painting. A portrait of an old woman with white curly hair, wrinkly skin and a big laughing smile. She's reaching her arms forward to the viewer, and a white ptarmigan is flying out of her arms, towards the right. A trail of red poppies and poppy petals tumbles off the ptarmigan as it goes. — *Grandma Frees the Ptarmigan, 2023*

I sometimes wonder why everything I paint recently, and somehow even the installations I do, gets a clouded overlay. It's oil paint, white fabric, soft white light; whatever. I keep washing everything away into a purposeful obscurity. (Except my portrait of my Ukrainian Grandma releasing her war trauma. For that I made the obscurity first, and she came out of it. That's a strange happening!) Recently I also found out I have cataracts, apparently caused by the various courses of prednisone I've been subjected to over these last 3.5 years of struggling with long COVID. Blah. Great. Not the news you want, as an artist! But even more recently I realized I might be replicating my own clouded cateract vision in my work. Huh.

I mean, part of me wants to embrace that (since the inflammatory effects of my long COVID also mean cataract surgery is not recommended), but part of me is still looking for a deeper meaning. And the white thing has been going on in my work for longer than I've had cataracts. I think I found my deeper meaning, during this current fire-season. It's self-silencing.

We live in a world full of fear, watching homes and towns and futures burn and flood and life just get harder and harder. And the best comfort we can give ourselves is to wrap up in the status quo. Get a latte from a huge corporate entity and watch some non-reality on Netflix. We Canadians aren't even allowed to share the news anymore (Meta: Working to silence the world!)

A big rough abstract painting and drawing of a screaming mouth, which basically fills the whole canvas, though a bit of nostrils are visible at the top. It's very rough and scribbly. Some people say upsetting but I don't think so because it's my own mouth!! It's called (I open my mouth and) Nothing Comes Out. It's a picture of a dream I've had most all of my life, where someone's being horribly hurt and I'm screaming for help, but... guess what?! Nothing comes out!! (How did you guess...?)
Predominant colours in this horrible scribbly drawing/painting are white, graphite grey, orange and pthalo blue. And red.
There's an uvula in the middle of the canvas but clearly... it's not doing anything. Maybe I got carried away with this description. — *(I open my mouth and) Nothing Comes Out, 2016*

I've been passionately determined to change the status quo since I was a kid, but people get defensive if I talk about change. People write off my personal status-quo-breaking experiments (unschooling, regenerative farming, rejecting many popular conveniences in an effort to live sustainably) as impossible for most, or, even worse, "crazy". I feel so frustrated; so unheard, and so afraid of losing community support (and friends!) because my voice has been too loud; too radical. So I'm trying to shout my meaning while simultaneously silencing myself (!) Yeah. That's weird.

Is it necessary? Do I risk being written off like Sinéad O'Connor and everybody else who just couldn't keep silent? Who tried to change us? Or am I getting desperate enough not to care?

I was so saddened by Sinéad's death that I got even quieter. Now I'm so infuriated with watching my province burn (the homes of family friends gone, family evacuated and praying they don't lose everything, and my own veggies wilting and dropping in the smoke) while so many continue their world travels, unnecessary purchases, and general adherence to the status quo. I feel like I've been shouting for change my whole life, and my voice is hoarse but still somehow no sound comes out. So today I'm going back to the studio and just see what comes out of my brushes, because I just can't not scream about it all right now.

I don't think I'll stop using white. It's also evocative for me these days of the smoke and ash that's now a part of our every summer. And the blindness with which we're going into the future. My blindness. But I'm going to try to stop silencing myself.

Procreate Project Archive X Air Gallery

A series of 18 art posters in a double row on a white wall. Predominant colours are pale yellows an creams, pink, and blacks.

I love this!!

So happy to be a part of this great project that puts the art of motherhood into public spaces!
That's my work (dis)robe: Maternity Wear you see near the top middle of the spread above. But it's just one of the many, many poignant pieces that are now out spreading the motherhood vibes in Manchester.

Six art posters are shown on a wall.
Three are abstract, one shows a bouquet of bending pink and white flowers, one shows a woman in a wedding gown upon which clamouring babies and a pregnant belly are painted, and one poster shows a figurative sculpture that is too distorted by the angle of the image to identify.

Currently the project creators are collaborating with Air Gallery to show it in various Manchester locations, but the whole poster series is available for other exhibits as well, so who knows where it will go next! What a fabulous creation.

Eight art posters hang on a wall. They're fabulous, but also hard to see because of the angle of the photo and the light reflection on them! Some figurative; some not. It's a great wall of posters by fabulous women, but you'll have to check out the link below it if you want to see more work!!

Do check out their site at procreateproject.com!

A shop window in Scotland shows a series of art posters on tack-board, surrounding a peekaboo window-within-a-window, where a person is seen shopping. One of the posters shows a naked woman sitting on a chair, legs spread, and holding a pair of giant pink plastic lips in front of her crotch. There are rainbow watercolour paintings on the horizontal surface at the bottom of the window. Yay rainbows!!!

All images credit: Procreate Project Archive

w h a t . h o m e in Gibsons, BC!

With huge thanks to the Gibsons Public Art Gallery and Canada Council for the Arts for putting their confidence in me, I can FINALLY announce that w h a t . h o m e is home in BC, where it all began.

In 2017 I began interviewing residents of BC's west coast on the subject of 'home'. I had some idea of where the topics might go, but I was surprised again and again by the amazingly heart-full, extremely unexpected, and often challenging stories that emerged. I've discovered through this work and other interview-based projects I've done that in any cross-section of humanity there will be a deep exploration of belonging, and a desire to make the best of always surprising circumstances. This project puts this on display.

However, the first iteration of this project was installed at Goleb in Amsterdam, as the culmination of my residency, there–a long way from home, you might say! But also not. I have family in the Netherlands, and began my art studies there, as well, so it is in fact a kind of displaced second home to me. I was invited to this residency by my friend and colleague, Igor Sevcuk, and received much support and feedback from him, his wonderful partner (and scientist and fellow artist) Go-Eun Im, other artists at Goleb, and of course my own partner, Markus Roemer. Not only did the project complete with this support, but also with visits and input from various Dutch friends and family of mine. The most amazing thing to me was that the stories and feelings from the West Coast of Canada translated perfectly to a Dutch audience. Amazing that we can take humanity from one side of the world, plop it down in another place, and we're still… human. With the same basic needs, and the same love.

Happily, though, now I get to bring the project back to where it began. And what a wonderful time we had putting up the dual-channel installation of
w h a t . h o m e !

OK maybe it was a little stressful given the tight timeline, but we made it, and pretty sure we've survived! Here's a little video compilation of the process of installing. You'll see me sitting on the floor doing a video-interview with Rohit Joseph for CBC Radio's weekend morning show, North by Northwest. Here's the fifteen-minute interview, if you'd like to hear it. It really was a joy to talk to Rohit, and a highlight of my career at this point.

Two artists in black pants and jackets sit on a bench of the Gibsons Public Art Gallery, framed by hanging projections of Emily van Lidth de Jeude's show, what dot home. The man on the left wears a colourful tam, and black-rimmed glasses, and has a long grey beard and hair. His grey walking cane rests between his hiking boots. The woman to his left wears a darker tam, has short grey hair, and holds a yellow purse in her lap. Both are looking thoughtfully at the projections on the hanging sheets, around them.

The opening was really incredible for me. Such a huge amount of support from my family, friends and community. I was totally blown away.

Seven white sheets are hanging in the middle of a gallery with concrete floors, covered with projections of a deciduous forest scene within which a woman sits on a chair ,talking. People are gathered in chairs and seated on the floor all around the exhibition, listening to the show.

Probably the biggest shock for me though was the unexpected appearance of a fabulous kid I once taught in the Netherlands. I haven't seen her in about thirty years, and she, her mother, and her kids now live on the Sunshine Coast, and came to the show!! AND she's an artist!!! What a wonderful surprise to connect again. Yet another thing that made me realize how grateful I am for the life I'm privileged to have. Here are a few photos from the opening. Thanks to my son Taliesin and brother Adrian for the photos. 🧡

Artist Emily van Lidth de Jeude stands half-hidden behind a hanging white sheet, upon which is projected the image of a young girl in a pink dress. Emily is wearing red pants, red shoes, and a dark grey sweater. A photographer stands on the right side of the frame, leaning back dramatically while taking a photo of Emily and the projected girl.

Also this guy!! Michael Gurney. What a fabulous reporter!! He came fully prepared, having already checked out the show and having a bunch of really good interesting questions about it. And his article shows he actually researched this quite thoroughly. I am truly honoured to have this show written about by him. He said some interesting things about it that even helped me understand it more, myself. Here's a link to the article he published: https://www.nsnews.com/local-arts/bowen-islanders-exhibition-at-gpag-is-homeward-bound-6574236

Two men are seated near a gallery wall, smiling pointing at sheets hanging in the middle of the room, which have landscape projections on them. In the distance, another woman is seated, wearing a black respiratory mask.

Two artists, Judi Gedye and Diane Buchanan, are framed by separate sections of the hanging white fabric of what dot home. Judi, on the left, is seated on a bench and wearing mostly black with a grey shawl-like coat and a white necklace. She has grey hair and black-rimmed glasses. Diane, standing on the right, wears red boots,a grey turtle neck, a green-grey jacket, and holds a green bag in front of her legs. She has long straight white hair, tied back. On the sheets, a projection of poet Jude Neale is shown. Jude is wearing a white and coloured summer dress, and has short white hair.

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.
Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien.
https://canadacouncil.ca

the struggle between change-making and capitalism

A Universe Inside Me, a change/able painting by Emily van Lidth de Jeude
To view this piece in action, see my MakerTube video.

All my life I've been interested in change-making. Other than loving my family, there's nothing in the world more important to me. But that's the issue–change-making costs money, and time that means I can't make money. My partner and I are constantly making choices to deny our kids some of the things their friends consider essential (travel, city-living, new devices, new shoes, a better car, and so many extra-curricular programs), in exchange for working on projects that we hope will better the world or just our own future. And yet, here we are with young adults on the verge of fleeing the nest, walking straight into the same capitalist trap they were raised in. And we're thinking of how to support their new city life while the world falls down around them.

Cognitive dissidence is the least of it. I'm sitting here in the bizarrely unsurprising October heat and drought, the other side of our yard obscured by smoke, and really just wondering what comes next.

In my work-life, I'm producing installations intended to bring people into connection with the ecosystems they live in, and with each other. I do commissioned portraits on the side, just to add a little tiny cash-flow to our family, but I've chosen a career that costs more money than it makes. I'm proud of this choice, but the balance is that my partner makes the family-sustaining income by creating software that, among other things, is used by companies logging old-growth forests around us, destroying the ecosystems I'm trying to save.

At home, we're trying to grow our own food, which has turned out to be a very good thing, now that inflation is hitting us so hard. But we're buying plastic bags to store chickens in, and the climate is so unpredictable we're constantly re-planting, or nurturing struggling plants for months that ultimately fail to produce crops. No learning-curve can keep up with the speed of climate change. So we keep ending up in the stores with everyone else, trying to meet our nutritional needs as cheaply as possible, while wasting endless dollars buying chips and treats made by corporate behemoths that we feel will keep our kids happy. So we can send them smiling into the future.

In our community we're traipsing around making improvements while our friends drop like flies around us. We're afraid to ask for help when we need it because we know everyone else is already beat up by their own struggles, so we isolate and feed our lonely pain with all the subscriptions and addictions we can. And we contemplate the struggle: How can we make enough money to feed our kids without destroying their future? How can we raise them happy in a world where nothing matters more than the capitalist quest, but safeguard them against a capitalist apocalypse? How can we output joy when there's only fear coming in?

I wish this was a post where I have all the answers. Sometimes I try to write posts like that, and at those times it feels like there's a possibility we can plan and manage our way out of this mess. Right now I just sink into a futile wish that we'd all just stay home and forget the dreams we were sold as children, as impossible as that seems. I wish we'd stop selling the same dreams to our own kids at the cost of even the meagrest subsistence in their future. I wish we would all just grow food in peace, love each other and what remains of the world outside our doors.

Learning everything all over again–only different again, too…

A mostly black and white painting of a woman playing a guitar. She has long white hair, glasses dropped down her nose as she is leaning forward over her hands, smiling but crunching one eyebrow as if concentrating on the chord she's playing.
Painting by artist Emily van Lidth de Jeude, called "Mum playing guitar". — Emily van Lidth de Jeude: "Mum playing guitar", 2022.

1994, Royal Academy of Visual Art, the Hague, Netherlands: My first painting instructor showed up to my studio during the first week and told me to get rid of the acrylics. He pointed to a painting sitting drying under the table, and described the dullness; the surface quickly losing any and all beauty it might have possessed just minutes before. So I did, and have been bonded to a series of ever-more-ecologically-friendly oil paints and mediums ever since.

I've used oils for nearly thirty years now, and I LOVE them. I love the smell, the feeling of them, the way they layer and all the ways I can scratch and draw through them. I grew up as a painter with oils… and in less than two weeks I'll be participating in a live painting event where oils are not an option (not allowed due to VOC's, and also because paintings must be dry and hung by morning!) So here I am teaching myself a new skill in a hurry!!! It turns out very little of my painting style and technique translates to acrylic, so I'm having to reinvent myself.

Anyway, here's my beautiful mama in one of her happy places. She's my first attempt at finding a new style and technique using only acrylics. It didn't go at all the way I thought it would, but I'm getting somewhere I like, anyway. And it's already dry!

The Unboxing Project at Sainte Croix de Mareuil

A cardboard box covered in postal tape and labels sits on a worn wooden floor. — *Un-boxing at Plas Bodfa (Wales) photo from Julie Upmeyer*

It's been interesting to follow the Un-boxing project on its travels so far. Gudrun Filipska's Arts Territory Exchange creation, a box of contributions from artists all over the world, has been making its way slowly from one exhibition space to another, and as an artist participant, I get to witness the remarks of curators along the journey. So here I link you through to curator Jane Linden's essay from La Vieille Closerie, Sainte-Croix-de-Mareuil in Aquitaine: "Curatorial Reflections on Un-boxing at Sainte-Croix-de-Mareuil by Jane Linden".

Contents of the Unboxing box lay neatly arranged on the worn wooden floor: The box, some packing plastic, and 34 items, most of which look like parcels or envelopes. — *process of Un-boxing at Plas Bodfa photo from Julie Upmeyer*

Jane has also posted some photos from the box's visit to France on her instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lavieillecloserie/

A raw-edged piece of handmade paper lies folded on green-carpeted stairs. There are rotted-leaf prints on the paper, and text written between them. The text says:
What is that?!
I wonder what the summer will look like this year. Which streams and rivers will dry up? Which species will go extinct? Which territories will burn up in this year's storms, droughts, and floods, and which territories will burn up in this year's fires?
I'm sending you this letter through time and across the surface of our planet, as a reminder of the time when leaves...
(The rest of the text is at too steep of an angle to decipher.) — *part of my own contribution to Un-boxing, displayed at Plas Bodfa photo from Julie Upmeyer*