MiaCoffeeSnow's photostream

An Artist born in Helsinki and brought up in Hackney.
Having shown a precocious intellect but a lack of basic spelling and grammar as a child I was eventually diagnosed as suffering from dyslexia, not my first condition, I had a stutter as a child. With a little help I would go on to mostly overcome these and many more hurdles to finish school, graduate university and even write 20,000 words for a novel in just a month.

Visual expression was a safe outlet away from those early years struggling to put pen to paper. The aesthetics of mark making, line drawings were important processes to me and freed me from the confusing constraints of language. In drawing people on the tube and in the joy of art class I found a gentle satisfaction.

Photography became a meditative art form for me at school and then later at college. Both the travels with my camera and the long sessions in the dark printing my latest works were very hypnotic.

Music accompanied my travels with my camera and my sessions in the darkroom. I had been schooled in the diversity of sound and composition by my father and tentatively I would seek out the sounds that resonated with me. Sound was always a positive influence on me capable of evoking a plethora of moods.

During my studies at art school I was diagnosed as suffering from schizophrenia. I had been hearing voices secretly for years. They were a reflection of myself, me from deep in my subconscious unburdened by rigorous logic and banal form and unleashed on my conscious thinking. The voices would eventually help me understand myself.

Having explored my gender and sexuality over the years, when I fell ill those topics came to the forefront. Everything positive in my life had revolved around images and image making but it wasn’t until I turned the lens on myself and tried to make sense of who I was that I came apart. Eventually my camera was taken from me on admission to hospital, it felt like I was loosing a limb.

Shattered, I would have to rebuild myself. The process was slow and I made many mistakes along the way. Years later I would be able to admit to close friends and family what I had been exploring in my wonderland and continued to struggle with day to day. I was able to talk rationally about my real desires to transition, to undergo hormone treatment and surgery.

To persuade me to start on my transition took several brushes with death and overwhelming euphoria at the mere hint of who I was inside. Acceptance that I might give myself for a moment helped guide me. Finally as I let slip my deepest darkest secret, the acceptance of others made me question my fear.

Fear is still with me although living in a partial dream world remains easy. The hard part of schizophrenia is getting the thoughts, emotions and feelings in a form that others can understand. Many don’t try to understand themselves let alone me and if they do their cultural programming kicks in. I try to have the courage in my convictions to be myself despite bigoted views around me.

Feeling my work is an important social tool to bring about discussion and awareness about gender and mental health without the focus on specifically queer or craft style "outsider art”. I see it as a matter of necessity to continue to draw, paint, write, make music, take photographs and shoot video footage.

I hope to show that only under the greatest pressure diamonds can be created but ultimately we can create beauty from the simplest and gentlest of actions.


I still live and work in Hackney, feel free to support my work here