Interview
Lauren Gorrie
Lauren Gorrie, 28, is an artist/photographer specializing in digital illustration and traditional mediums such as paint-watercolour, spray paints, airbrushing, oils and gouache, drawing, collage, paint pouring, jewellery making, paper crafts and terrariums. Her art draws from personal experience with herbattles with mental/physical illness and domestic violence to shine a light into the darkness and bring a message of hope to others suffering showing the duality of living with invisible illnesses and to fight the associated stigma. “For there is no beautiful surface without a terrible depth” -Friedrich Nietzsche.
What is your background and how did you start your journey in the art world?
“I grew up in the outer suburbs of Melbourne, Australia in a place called Rowville in a middle- class family, we weren’t rich nor were we poor. My parents were divorced when I was 7 and after a traumatic and long custody battle and being put through the family court system, I spent most of my life being a travelling between their houses every 3 days and living by a set of orders made up by the family court system which severely affected every part of my life until I was 17 years old.
My journey with art really began as a child with my mum. As I started school, I remember an art class where I attempted marbling and my grade 6 art teacher encouraged me to keep practicing my drawings; I used to draw cartoons back then. As I got older, art became a sort of escape for me during my years at high school where I was bullied over my weight until I developed an eating disorder, bulimia nervosa which I spent the next ten years on and off struggling with. I disappeared into my art to cope with that and the bullying and harassment at school of being the odd one out, an outsider and never quite fitting in. The art room at Rowville secondary college became my haven where my art teacher Robyn Geake would always let me into the art room at lunch to finish my works or do extra work. Around age 16, when I became a part of Rowville Institute of the Arts, which was around when I got into drawing anatomy. It was then, I bought my first anatomy book, I thought I should know what’s the structure underneath to be able to draw what’s on the surface just like an architect needs to know the structure that makes up a house. This is a principle I follow for all my artworks to this day.
The Top Arts Exhibition on at the time, I went to see with my class were also an inspiration to want to take my art to the next level in hopes by the time I was in VCE my art would be included in the exhibition, this was not the case. In year eleven, I did spend over 100 hours creating screen prints, having had the freedom to explore my own creative process thanks to my teacher Peter Gurry, who gave me the space to do so, my prints which I believe are some of my best works in a traditional medium were based on the theme of power and corruption, which taught new techniques in print making, which I use to this day. The precision required to execute such fine line work is the underpinning of my artworks today.
An exhibition of Gustave Moreau’s at the NGV when I was about 17 and his work the was what inspired me to delve into symbolism. Symbolism is hidden thought my works. I fell in love with the idea of subliminal messaging and being able to express things without doing so overtly. Great authors such as Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s and his work Crime and Punishment and J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye were all sources of inspiration for a lot of my early works. By the time I was more developed as an artist, I had started to become very unwell. I had developed severe depression during my last year of high school, I dropped out and spent the year in and out of psychiatric facilities, where I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder at age 18. My time spent in these places, I turned to my art as a coping mechanism and way to express myself and in so many ways I feel it helped save my life. It gave me an outlet for all the pain I was experiencing living with borderline personality disorder being in the public system, with no health insurance and struggling with finding the right medications, being mistreated and misunderstood by doctors that had no time of day for me because I had borderline personality disorder. Whilst attending therapy and working through my trauma, I survived over 7 suicide attempts during this period and struggled with self-harm, so I poured all that pain into my artworks, it helped save my life and gave me an outlet.
It was in my fist ever private psychiatric hospital my doctor referred me into an art therapy program the first I had ever been, which it’s really from here my journey into art really began. Being given a structed way to express myself along with psychotherapeutic techniques changed the way I did art completely. I had a lovely art therapist who gave me so much care and support and pushed me when I needed the push to better myself and my art, she gave me the space for me to develop my art to that next level while I was recovering again in and out of hospital.
During this time, I was also taking airbrushing classes where my teacher was understanding of my issues but also pushed me when I needed it and I gained a high level of skill in this area. Over recent years experiencing domestic violence in a relationship and then leaving that abusive relationship and going through having to get an IVO, dealing with police, federal court, losing my home. Then experiencing a clinical trial of medicinal cannabis for my debilitating chronic pain condition, a rare genetic condition that means I’m missing a part of collagen in my DNA, that I suffer with called Hypermobile Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, which causes fatigue, chronic pain, dislocations and a wide range of symptoms across every part of the body due to the missing collagen which is in every part of the body. The clinical trial which was supposed to ease the pain went horribly wrong due to the doctor knowingly prescribing the medication when I was contraindicated to it. I ended up suffering with drug induced psychosis and spent a whole year during 2021 suffering from hallucinations, delusions, thought disorder, severe dissociation, had to relearn how to speak and tried committing suicide multiple times all due to a certain doctor’s negligence. But a lot of my best artworks were created during this period, so somehow, becoming so sick seemed to unlock a part of me creatively, I didn’t know existed.
To now, where my life has done a complete 180 where I am recovered, not cured, it’s been a long journey for me and my art which tells my story along the way, that without the unwavering support of my trea.ng team of about 10 years or more, they know who they are which have never given up on me and my family and friends, you know who you are, that I have a whole new life and haven’t been in to hospital for a year, I have the safety I have always dreamed of and a newly created family that loves and cares about me and have a new sense of freedom that is a new source of inspiration in my artworks. Thanks to my art, I have survived myself. To quote Fredrich Nietzsche “To live is to suffer, to survive is to find the meaning in the suffering.”
What inspires you?
“My experience with mental illness and chronic illness, relationships, the natural environment, current events and issues, people in my life past and present, tattoo culture, architecture, design and unique eclectic objects I usually find from second hand shops.”
“My work is a commentary on my own personal lived experience.”
What themes do you pursue? Is there an underlying message in your work?
“The themes I pursue in my work are mental health, chronic illness, domestic violence, suicide, medical issues, invisible illness, relationships, family and love. The underlying message in my work is shedding a light into the darkness and discussing topics that people are unwilling or unable to discuss or explore, so exposing areas of mental health that don’t garner any attention in the media to break down the stigma associated and raise awareness about the conditions which impact me and others close to me to hopefully improve knowledge about specific mental health conditions and start a conversation and the disorder is not untreatable or who we are as people vs. the disorder is largely misunderstood. Stigma prevents doctors from being willing to treat people like me and it can put our lives on the line. I have had hospital emergency departments turn me away when suicidal because of the label of borderline and if my artwork can contribute to changing that by reaching even just one person then I’ve done my job as an artist.
I express my own journey with mental and chronic illness through my art and use this to reach out and relate to others. Same with the Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, if I can make one person more aware of rare diseases like EDS which get very little to no funding and no airtime and is largely invisible to the public and even most doctors who have to google it, in general and the facts on chronic pain or chronic pain and mental health or how it actually feels to suffer with these things are what I aim to express and if it helps one person and puts some real information from a lived experience perspective out there, my artwork is then effective as more than just art. Domestic violence is something a lot of people can relate to and bringing more awareness from my own personal experience with this and putting it out there that you can recover and bounce back from the most difficult and devastating circumstances. And get to the other side and if you really want it there is help, this is something I am passionate about pursuing in my works as well. Speaking up and not being silenced.”
How would you describe your work?
“My work is a commentary on my own personal lived experience and that of those around me with mental illness and chronic illness. It draws on the experience I have had interacting with the public and private health system in different capaci.es. It explores many aspects of life with an invisible illness such as medications, diagnoses, doctors, hospitals, medical procedures, friends, family, relationships, domestic violence, suicide, so the less pretty aspects of life but the ones we need to discuss the most. I would describe my work as unique and intricate, bright, yet colourful with a dark edginess. The works I have provided some background “On the Borderline” is a commentary of the dual nature of borderline personality disorder of being able to seem like the most normal person in the world but on the other side you are struggling with the disorder in every single way, or you want to be seen like a normal person once you are in recovery not looked at as though the disorder is your whole identity but everyone sees you through the lens of the disorder and stigma. Pulled apart at the seams explores what it is like living in an abusive relationship, on the outside and on the inside, even when sometimes the abusive one is the internal monologue in your head and the personal you live with. Freedom at last. This is a self-portrait of how it felt when I finally left my abusive relationship and the first time, I truly felt happiness and personal freedom, love and autonomy in my life to live on my own terms for the first time”
Which artists influence you most?
“Gustave Moreau’s use of watercolour techniques has been of much fascination to me, I became interested in his work after seeing an exhibition of his years ago with a particular work called the Apparition, Moreau favoured mythical and biblical subjects particularly women and this is where my fascination with the symbolism began and where my inspiration began for hiding symbols into my own work or largely making my own work a modern version of symbolism. Henri Fuseli use of contrast from light to dark and unusual paint mixing techniques is something I have translated into a digital medium often my images having a high degree of contrast from darks to light or strong black lines and using a digital program in an unconventional manner mixed with more traditional techniques. M.C Escher’s use of line and artictic anatomy in an artistic way is of much inspiration to my works, much like a lot of his works have either hands or eye’s, this has inspired my use of eyes in my own works, and my quest to be able to draw eye’s and which has expanded to other parts of the body with skill and detail. Salvador Dali’s technical skill, precise craftsmanship and bizarre yet somehow striking images have influenced my own work to include a high degree of technical skill and preciseness and often use bizarre yet strong images in my own work to reinforce whatever the message is of that artwork or theme being explored. Andy Warhol’s use of bright colours and silk screen techniques which I have incorporated into somewhat a digital format the pop art movement’s exploration on of popular culture through subject matter and bright colours.”
What is your creative process like?
“My creative process is first finding a direct source of inspiration which usually involves searching Pinterest and collecting images relating to the theme I am exploring when it comes to my digital artworks, I will often use bits and pieces of multiple images, insert them into a new canvas, then bring the opacity down to trace bits and pieces of existing combined with my own freehand drawing then delete the existing images I used to trace, merge the layers then use different brushes and pens using clip studio paint pro and once the line drawing is complete I will run the image through photoshop secondarily to adjust the colour or lighting and add a signature and watermark into the image. Sometimes I will scan a hand drawn image into the computer or take a photo of it and insert it into the program and overlay a more designs with the tablet into a new image. I will also use landscape photos I have taken and turn them into digital paintings by colour matching the colours and then removing the original image underneath. For my traditional art I use processes like cut and paste words I feel stand out and pictures that speak to me for collages, cutting old books up and using them to make flowers, and creating little fairy gardens with crystals and fairy lights to make terrariums.”
What is an artist’s role in society and how do you see that evolving?
“‘Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable’ -Banksy.
I believe for a single moment in time art should be able to make you lose all control and be able to make the viewer completely surrender themselves to the moment. I feel this is largely an artist’s role in society is ask the uncomfortable questions and make commentary on issues that most people are unwilling to ask or speak about and explore those issues in depth or at the very least start a conversation. I also feel art should bring a sense of comfort or relief to the soul, a sense that somewhere out there in the world there is someone that understands.”
Website: www.zebracornartandesigns.com.au
Instagram: @zebracornartandesigns
