Tonight on Greentea: Aspie artist making it...MILLIE ! !!

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I left my job (in a museum where I had been associated for over 20 years) because as hard as I worked, they always wanted more, I had nothing left to give, and I had shut down. It has take several months for me to get back to the point where I don't feel nauseated just thinking about working in another museum setting.

Those in positions of authority try to penalize us individually for system failures (in my case a lousy economy meant that the institution didn't have enough money and since I shut down in schmoozy social situations such as fundraisers, I was though of as being smart but not very effective). Sometimes, however, we have the last word. ASD tenacity can help us to be very good at what we are passionate about, and ultimately that quality can lead to recognition by others who strive to rise above mediocrity.

Z

I fought over things too in my younger years, like a wild and rabid animal. I have learned to walk away and re-invest that energy in the positive. all humans need to do that.

But I agree - sometimes the "social justice" and fairness tendencies in us which are well discussed in some literature on ASD's means we pursue things with dogged determination and can activate changes where no-one else could be bothered. good luck and i hope it helps you and improves the system.

I see and hear so many stories here which echo my experiences and difficulties. It is a very tough journey at times - trying to be who we are in the world of autism and also having a connection to the real world and its machinations. We can pretend to be round pegs for a little while, - some of us, that is - some can and some cannot - but after a while, everyone discovers I am a square peg with all these flaws and unusual grains and seams that are different to how they look.

the flaws are strange wood whorls. The unusual grains can look a bit different at first. But if they only looked a bit harder they might get lost in the beauty of the "flawed" patterns.
Trouble is, most people look at the markings on the square peg and toss it aside because it isn't the same as all the others.

Thank you everyone for your good wishes, I'm back. Still in awe at the wonderful questions from the posters and millie's fascinating answers.

So here I go with a few of the questions that popped in my head while reading all the posts (take your time, it's a lot of questions):

What period of your life was it when you got social benefits? And what did they give you social benefits for, since this was before your AS diagnosis? And do you receive benefits now, on account of your AS? I'm not able to work (get fired all the time, no true reasons given), yet I'm not eligible for social benefits in my country because they don't officially diagnose AS / NLD in adults. I'm facing destitution and live with the terror you mentioned. I don't have any special abilities to work as freelance either. If I could live on social benefits as you mention, I wouldn't mind having just enough for a roof and some food. The problem is here you're either liked by some employer or die in the streets.

When and how did it happen that you started the upward spiralling after your dark ages of addiction?

What period of your life was it when you got married, had a child, got a house, grew a garden?

Would you agree to sign an exclusivity agreement with a prominent gallery owner if they asked you (and you could terminate it whenever you wanted)?

Does a gallery owner agreeing to display your work / more of your work than other painters' have anything to do with the personal relationship between you two? I mean, does it depend to a certain extent on whether they like the painter as a person, does it mean one has to make sure both that one's work is good and that the gallery owners like you? Is there a lot of ass-kissing of gallery owners among artists?

What period of your life was it when you got social benefits? And what did they give you social benefits for, since this was before your AS diagnosis? And do you receive benefits now, on account of your AS?

I was on benefits of one sort or another from age 18 when i left school until the age of 40.
I have a host of issues which are all related to my ASD - from past addiction as i have outlined, through to HEP C 9 (contracted during years of addiction) through to dx'es for clinical depression and abnormally high anxiety. Most of these - except for the Hep C - are quite common co-morbids for someone with an undiagnosed ASD. They are the peripheral issues i dealt with all my life - quite unsuccessfully until the dx - except for the addiction - which i really addressed at age 36. I have been clean and sober since then which is just great and has been essential in terms of me developing the kind of positivity Glider18 is trying to encourage here on WP.

I am on weird little part pension now...a kind of safety net that protects me from sliding into oblivion during recession. I am very public about my ASD and it is documented in my social security files.

Last week I went to a disabilities services appointment and discussed the prospect of going on a full pension. I am against doing so because I can just manage as I am at present and because i feel as if staying off it keeps me trying a little harder with my career. I could quite easily return to a full disabilities pension with my dx, but i choose not to at present. I see it very much as a safety net that some of us brainiac ASD people require here and htere or permanently to get us through the tough times. and of those - there can be quite a few!


When and how did it happen that you started the upward spiralling after your dark ages of addiction?
age 36. 7th rehab.
about a year in an insititution living wiht about 28 other people and staff. a nightmare. When i got there i flipped out and started rocking and also moaning like an animal. they said it was trauma. I know it as autism. they whacked me on anti d meds and i fit in a bit better. they liked that. they always like us to fit in better, don;t they? Like temple Grandin, i have had a very good response to a minuscule dose of ssri meds. BUt i came off those about 6 months ago and am weirder, more reclusive and more hyper-focused on my special interest and more apathetic about engaging with people. I am ten times happier. i am me. I do not fit in better, but i am happier.

What period of your life was it when you got married, had a child, got a house, grew a garden?
All this happened after getting clean.
it happened about 8 years ago througha 12 step program - which have been my means and conduit for connecting with some people. My ex partner is my dear friend. He is really amazing. He is a maths and science teacher. He did a unit of physics at uni last year (distance ed and on top of his school teaching load) and got an HD. He is now studying a Masters of Accountancy distance ed with a uni down south. he does three subjects now, plus runs our house. He cooks every second meal and has his own living quarters. I have my own living area. and my studio.
we both love our son.
My ex-partner is an ex-junkie also. He has been clean and sober for ten years. HE is a very good man and very decent. He would tend towards AS but functions well in the world and has no sensory problems. He has a flat affect and a flat voice and has alexuthymic tendencies. He like to spend time on his own or with his son.

Would you agree to sign an exclusivity agreement with a prominent gallery owner if they asked you (and you could terminate it whenever you wanted)?
NO. Been there and got out of it earlier on in my career. It happened some years ago and basically i learned i was naive, green and could easily be taken for a ride by unscrupulous art dealers. I have an ASD. I ahve to be very careful of my relating with people because i can be easily done over. When i got out from these art dealers - and i might add they represent some of the top artists in my country - I told them they were worse than the worst gangster drug dealers i had met in my younger years. Hideous people. I am now with a smaller gallery that lets me paint whatever I want and gives me freedom.
Money and the "right gallery" isn't everything. Sometimes the worst disasters come in the most sparkling of packages. I prefer small, quiet, slow, good, integrity, honesty, peace in teh studio. I stay away from the marauding sharks and the hype.

Does a gallery owner agreeing to display your work / more of your work than other painters' have anything to do with the personal relationship between you two? I mean, does it depend to a certain extent on whether they like the painter as a person, does it mean one has to make sure both that one's work is good and that the gallery owners like you? Is there a lot of ass-kissing of gallery owners among artists?

This is an interesting question. The answer is undoubtedly YES.
I am a quiet, slow-bowler. I am not a big and brash art star. Dangerous and odious. Foundations must be built on integrity, hard work and decency. I do not like schmoozing and lies and shallow stuff.
I do not think i am "liked" so much as "respected."
In my region and beyond I have a reputation as an up and coming artist who is difficult., hyper-sensitive and too intelligent and blunt for her own good. I have been bullied by other women artists in the scene. (women despise me more than men. I think it is because i talk more logically and intellectually and therefore connect with men on that level in the art world. I am a facts person and not a schmoozer. Men are not interested in f*****g me. But they are interested in talking with me. Other women artists - save for a few - have been downright HORRID to me.) With true perseverative ASD style...I go into my studio each day and think..."thirty year, give me thirty years...and i will show them. So i turn my rage and resentment into a true pursuit of my ideas.
(the women i have most related to EVER IN MY ENTIRE LIFE are some women here on WP.)

Most artists ass-kiss - except for the ones who are evidently weird and undx'ed ASD. and there are a scattering of those around!
I find ass-kissing in the scene an impossibility. I can be friendly and nice to gallery people but when it gets into the complexities of relating beyond some surface stuff i have learned, i flounder.
I do most of my corresponding by email and they let me do that.
I naturally think outside the box and do not ever follow prescribed methods of doing things. I have developed my own way of doing things. One good thing about art dealers is that they ARE used to dealing with a fair few eccentrics and odd-bods, so that is accepted more than in another profession.

I'm enjoying this interview immensely. You've been answering questions that I've asked myself for many years about artists (for my novel), and I thought that, due to my AS and impossibility to make friends, I'd never have the opportunity to ask anyone. I consider this a gift from God, as well as from you, of course And I'm elated to see that my sculptor character is realistic - he's just as you describe yourself, and the scene you describe is just as I described it in the story.

I also look in awe at your life, so very different from mine.

And you've suddenly given me a goal to strive for in life, now that I'm at such a loss: I can't make people like me, but I can strive to be respected through my integrity, honesty and hard work. These 3 are who I am, it's just a question of valuing them myself and making them work for me instead of against me.

I hope others are reading and benefitting from this interview too, I'd hate to know I'm being selfish here enjoying it so much!

In sculpture, for example, you can reproduce your work and sell it many times over from one mold. But in painting, there's only one original. Does this mean you make less money for the same amount of work?

Which brings me to the next question: When you finish a painting, how do you take it to the gallery to ensure it's not spoiled on the way? And what's the exact process (registering that you brought a painting, securing it, receipts if sold, etc.?)

How do you know when it's time for a vacation? Do you take regular weekends off?

Can you one day become independent from galleries?

Don't galleries ask you to keep a steady supply, thus creating a commercial feeling in you, with kind of deadlines?

In sculpture, for example, you can reproduce your work and sell it many times over from one mold. But in painting, there's only one original. Does this mean you make less money for the same amount of work?
Yes. but one does it because it is thebest thing in the world to do. For me it is all there is. so money is secondary. a bit is good. i am not greedy.

Which brings me to the next question: When you finish a painting, how do you take it to the gallery to ensure it's not spoiled on the way? And what's the exact process (registering that you brought a painting, securing it, receipts if sold, etc.?)
Professional Art transporters. THe big white truck comes. paintings are wrapped and packaged in bubblewrap somettimes, other times not. They are strapped into teh storage unit in the van.

How do you know when it's time for a vacation? Do you take regular weekends off?
I do not take time off. ever. Never. Ever. I would do more if i could. It is my special interest, my passion and my obsession and reason for living. I think about it all the time. what is a vacation? i am always on vacation WHEN i am painting.

Can you one day become independent from galleries?
no. not really. too much business stuff to do. too much interaction with people. Sometimes people ring our home and i tell them to f**k off. (bluntness.) i do so because they disturb my work process. i could not ever deal with the people part of the independence from galleries. it would be hideous.


Don't galleries ask you to keep a steady supply, thus creating a commercial feeling in you, with kind of deadlines?[/quote]

yes. it is horrible. they also might reject a really brilliant painting you have done because they know they cannot sell it easily. this happens a lot. I rail against this with gnashing teeth and a lot of pain. Other artists i know who are NT do not. they take it i their stride and go with the flow (huh?)

I find the commercial side weird and unfathomable. I also recognise i need to make some money. I have a vision called "Harmony Through Disparity>" and it is my creative philosophy. They might get it in twenty or 30 years. if not, that;s bad luck. I cannot paint to a formula - i am disparate and fragmented - my work reflects that. It comes together in large interior works i do ten feet long. these will go o show in sydney in 2 weeks, so i have to go to my own opening and i am sick thinking about it. It is horrible and takes me a week to recover. migraines and vomiting.

WOW, professional art transporters! Sounds so exciting!

My sculptor becomes sick too before a show or a vernissage at the gallery. Is this an Aspie thing, you think?

This Sidney show sounds very interesting...care to tell us more about how you're connected to it? Is this something you must do in order to help the art dealers market/advertise your work? Could you limit the amount of time you're there? Do you have to be there?

My sculptor becomes sick too before a show or a vernissage at the gallery. Is this an Aspie thing, you think?

No. All artists find it hard. I think ASD artists find it much, much harder. It really does take a week to recover and find myself again.

This Sydney show sounds very interesting...care to tell us more about how you're connected to it? Is this something you must do in order to help the art dealers market/advertise your work? Could you limit the amount of time you're there? Do you have to be there?

My gallery is putting on a show of 3 of its artists - i am one of them. ten works. two big 3 metre x 2 metre works and 8 or so smaller works.
an opening is usually 2 or so hours long. I will limit the time i am there> i will also disappear if i have to.

in a few years it is my aim to not even go to the openings. at this stage i have to so potential buyers can view the monkey in the cage. They like that. and i pay in exhaustion and migraine and vomiting. It is also in Sydney which is just a big, horrible, over stimulating city for me. It is where i was born. i lived there until age 36. I am not very good at dealing with the city. I have meltdowns in public or might scream at someone for accidentally knocking or brushing against me in a queue to buy a train ticket.

and Greentea...I really believe you have it in you to write a very good novel. You see, your powers of analysis are quite phenomenal. You could do it. Perhaps the "release" from employment is the Gods' way of saying "Greentea...you must create and devote your faculties to the creation of great writing."
Jeesh...i will hassle you about this forever, now.

yes...look towards being respected rather than liked. Besides, if i am liked, i cannot feel it anyway, so why pursue it? I really cannot feel it when someone likes or loves me, so it is better to pursue the VALUES we are imbued with.

Thank you for your belief in me, millie. If I could get social benefits to ensure a bit of a roof and food, I certainly would heed my calling. I do believe I could do something good.

Continuing with the interview:

Where do you receive inspiration from for your paintings?

Do you like your paintings? All of them? What do you feel for them?

As an Aspie, do you have the symptom of motor clumsiness? If so, how does that affect your work?

Continuing with the interview:

Where do you receive inspiration from for your paintings?
The inspiration comes from art history and also from my own life.
What i do note is that my whole approach to my work is very different from most other artists who tend to follow a kind of single theme and way of painting their whole lives. (well many do and some do not. I am in the minority latter camp.)
I am a big fan of Bonnard, a big fan of Cezanne, a big fan of Giotto and Piero Della Francesca. I am also a fan of Rembrandt and Picasso was bloody amazing. I am a big fan of Braque.
I have a fertile imagination. And i was glad to hear Attwood recently pooh pooh the idea that we people on the spectrum do not have imagination. Some do and some don't.
I also draw from life experience.
I just painted my dog the other day and did two drawings of her yesterday.
I also painted this really syrupy painting last week called "One for Machine Girls Everywhere" which I will never sell and which will sit in my cell of a bedroom. It is two metres high and narrow and is an abstracted machine girl with a real face who is shrouded in white flowers. It is for us ASD women everywhere. We need some love. I painted it and actually thought of many of the women on WP who have enriched my life, taught me, enlightened me and helped me , as I worked on it. That is how i process my care for people. It is a private pursuit for me in the studio.


Do you like your paintings? All of them? What do you feel for them?
I do not like my paintings very much. I am never satisfied with them. I am only interested in the works I am working on.
Some I am incredibly fond of. There are a handful I love as much as i love my little collection of brass objects or elephants.
I give a lot away, i take second rate work to the garbage dump and slash it. I am not really attached to the outcomes but more to the process of doing - the autistic intensity. That is the MAIN thing for me - that sense of complete and total immersion in my special interest. Pulling me out of that zone is like an extraction of sorts. Unbearable.


As an Aspie, do you have the symptom of motor clumsiness? If so, how does that affect your work?
It is very interesting. I have lower body motor-clumsiness - so I bump into things a lot and am often spotted with bruises. I have extremely low muscle tone in the lower limbs and feel a sense of constant weakness in my legs.
I have upper body dexterity in the arms and never had a problem with writing. I do tip over a lot of stuff in the studio and bang about a bit. I am clumsy and am liable to trip over a painting and step through it. But i can work with a triple naught brush and do really detailed work if i choose to.
(I feel as if the lower and upper parts of my body are two different bodies sewn together. Upper is strong and competent and lower feels clumsy, uncoordinated and uncomfortable. )

Millie, I've taken the liberty to copy paste this quote from another thread of mine (it's the "Does your AS threaten your survival?" thread; if it doesn't feel good, I'll delete it presto!) because I'd like to know what you mean, in more detail, if you wish to share.

Well, I have fallen into a lot of dangerous situations throughout the course of my life. Where others had an inkling of trouble, i naively remained. As many here know, I began self-medicating in my early teens. There are many here on WP who have done this - particularly older people who have not had early help. I medicated social paralysis and sensory issues with drugs and alcohol. MY story is not unique> nor is it heroic. It is just the sad reality of what can happen to us.
In my twenties and thirties, this situation became quite dire. I was never able to easily manage life, and so i would retreat into substances. I ended up homeless on many occasions. i lived on the streets here and there or in boarding houses in the slum areas of Sydney where the residents were often autistics, drug addicts, dual diagnosis people, and mental health patients spat out by the system and left to fend for themselves. It was a terrible time. I cannot fully express the pain of those years or the great yearning for wanting to somehow understand people, society and life and find a place that was warm and caring and comforting. I cannot adequately express the depths of desolation and the incredulity i felt at my predicament> why, if i was so smart, was I ending up in these scenarios? what was wrong with me? there was something amiss and i knew it my whole life. Other women would get out of th situations I was in...long before any evident danger. I did no even read danger or sense it in the way they did.
i had an acute animal survival instinct which i think is akin to heightened sensory processing, but I was slow in the reading of people.
I'd end up in danger where others would not, but i would get out of danger where others could not. (lack of social reading ability, heightened survival instinct....very autistic, and very similar to some of the ideas that Inventor puts forward in his novel "Eyes of Time.")

I was not unattractive. I fell victim to some unscrupulous people at different times during those years. I was picked up by a male gangster and then later taken to a pub where I was bullied by a bunch of men. I smelt hair burning. THey had burned my long hair from behind me and were laughing and I had not noticed because I did not even read what was happening> It was not until much later that i fully understood and was able to analyse this situation. My hair did not catch alight fully. But i look back in horror at this and many incidents
On another occasion I was in a car full of men. Unfortunately, ASD women get into cars filled with men and do not read the danger. I did not. Their words were nice. That is what i relied on. And so they drove me around and told me there were spades in the boot of the car and they were going to take me out to "Lapa" - short for La Perouse which is a notorious area in sydney for the dumping of bodies.

One girl I knew was murdered. she was not autistic - rather an addict.

I went to prison. I was there briefly...not long but long enough. I was threatened with being bashed because I could not stop my verbose monologues. I had all my cigarettes stolen. The girls were very tough. I am never really liked by group mentality girls anywhere. Where there is a gang they will usually have a go at me. Like i am a magnet for it.

On another occasion i was bashed by a man on the streets.

The gangster man who I got involved with is now dead. thank goodness. He threatened me regularly with his gun.
Eventually I had to leave the city to escape.


I fell into these and many, many other scenarios because I could not read people. I have seen the worst of humanity and believed the worst kinds of people because of a difficulty reading people in the moment. I have amazing analytical powers but require time and isolation to do so. I cannot easily sift through people, situations, contexts, truth and lies and cruelty. I cannot discern well at times. There are many, many such incidents.

I know all about the worst and ugliest of humanity and as a woman with an ASD, I have seen and experienced the most horrendous things.

These days i value peace, quiet and my painting.
I worry for any of my ASD fellows who struggle with homelessness, survival and those kinds of issues. I have lived through it.

Reading this was as fascinating as it is painful.

I often wonder why, being so wise, I'm far below the stupidest of people at surviving, let alone living well. I guess it's not about wisdom but about the instinct of what is required from one in each specific situation to succeed in it. When they fired me, they kept a bunch of colleagues of mine who don't have 1/10th of my experience and skills and dedication and sophistication for the job.

Yes, Greentea.
I identify with you in many ways. I am clueless with people and I have incredible insight in other ways. it was this unneven pattern of abilities that was such a mystery to me for many years until I found out about autism and its many facets. Absolutely razor sharp insight in some ways, and then this great gulf - a kind of naive buffoonery - that is how i have seen it in myself. And it has made me a bit of a target here and there.

That is it with us. we may have all the skills in the world, all the job finesse and brilliance. But we need somehow, to find ways to make the world work for us, because it is darn slow in coming around to accommodating us in the ways we require.
my luck is that my special interest is commodifiable. I do not know where i would be if that was not the case.