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Stephanie Weirathmueller

@weirathmueller

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Artist | Gentle work
Creating with compassion
ME/CFS | CPTSD
Advocating Disability and Mental Health
Former Registered Nurse
Fredericton NB

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I was thinking during Creativity Club (@feliciaforte)
That my injury with my creativity, and really just in being seen, I see as a relational injury. Worthiness injury. Maybe I have overstepped boundaries in the past and in an effort to reduce harm, became very careful, vigilant and small. And it was also a teaching from formative relationships, an intelligent response to protecting myself in younger years. But it became so constricting. It became a vice so tight I stopped making, connecting. And having to abandon my voice, right to mistakes, or simply a different opinion, became a protective habit. So I actively am now searching for different ways to unwrap it, how to excavate intentions, and beliefs. Build new ones, new experiences to affirm them. So that I can take up space, so I can play.

The thing I’ve done mostly to examine my limiting beliefs around care and responsibility (productivity etc), was shame work. That work would take me straight to what was supporting it. For example I would uncover—I am too much. To be a good person I need to be humble. I am responsible for others feelings.

To bridge that belief to have more nuance and compassion I keep saying to myself what sounds more true…

I am inherently worthy. I can speak and take up space. I am learning and growing. I will do the repair when there is a rupture. I am not responsible for knowing others feelings. It is ok if this takes me time while I am learning safety in being seen, with my strength and imperfections. I bring my own ingredients to the world.

It is a gradual process, but is always changing, but the work is changing how I show up and make things, and how I share things too. by @weirathmueller

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13 hours ago

For the past couple of nights before bed, Frankie and I turn off the lights in my bedroom and light a candle and make a wish. We cuddle on the bed and look at some cat videos in the dark with the candlelight. And she gets really sleepy. I wanna keep doing this. It’s so nice. It reminds me of when we were kids and we would light candles and pray, but the devotion is much more relatable and less controlling. She lights the candle. She says a prayer/wish. I say mine. We cuddle. She blows out the candle. Maybe in a way I’m rewriting this experience as I wish it had been.

I have this goal in parenting where I really want to be more present with her. Teach her things in a way that follows more trauma informed pedagogy/parenting. Where there is consent, and inspiration. Discipline and control is replaced with devotion and curiosity. So less about shame. More love based, relational, and playful.

And I wish to break one specific trauma chain through any conflict that occurs. If there is conflict, real rupture and repair happens, no one is dominated by shame and control, so she doesn’t inherit conflict trauma, but she understands it as a place to transform in relationship—safety for activation, space for understanding, planing for reducing harm, making change. Inherited systems of domination and control are disrupted. Imperfectly but with devotion. So she has a way to have this emotional intelligence, and stand up for things she believes in.

It was my prayer when she lit the candle these last few nights.🕯️ by @weirathmueller

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2 days ago

This is how I apply for grants now

If I was going to give myself any advice for applying to a grant this is what I would say.

First use it as an exercise for dreaming. Think of something that you really want to do with your art that maybe you’ve been avoiding, or something you’re doing right now that you wish you could get funding for. Write an artist statement from your heart. What you hope and dream. Write down all of the different ideas and experiments you want to try. Write down when and how you would get it done if you had infinite energy and time and finances and support.

Next, before any rubric still, make it realistic for your body and your mind and your spirit. Working with my MECFS, I can only work two hours a day. I have severe fatigue slides at the beginning of every season and after big holidays, life events, or colds. None of this is a problem. This is just a landscape I need to work with. Modify the grant to suit you and your body.

Only then go over the parameters that the grant asks for. And do this part with compassion too. That means, if this part is hard for you, contact the granting body and ask for help. Ask a friend for help, family for help. Go slow. I don’t like writing so I use dictation for instance. That’s what I had to do to write this post.

Get someone who understands you and your project to write a recommendation letter. Someone who really believes in you.

Whether you get the grant or not, do the project anyway. When the next grant comes up, use this work to build another grant truer to your needs, more sustainable for you. And each time, press repeat. You are including yourself in your own community; your creativity is your own research and offering, a journey and place for connection. A grant’s validation doesn’t take that away.

(Do this a month or do this the day before. it doesn’t matter. It’s all part of the process. There is no right way, it’s just about finding the way that suits you and your brain.)

This can become a place where multiple grants/projects/shows can come from.

Artsnb creation grant is due Thursday 🙌❤️ by @weirathmueller

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6 days ago

February Tulips 7x5 inches, finishing touches 🌷💕 by @weirathmueller

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9 days ago

Mapping out the next piece 🧩❤️ by @weirathmueller

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11 days ago

I’ve seen artists create so many different kinds of work to process chronic illness and disability: ritual work, blankets and pillows used as sacred objects, quilting as meditation, dream drawings, rest performances, process drawing and painting, photographs of the body or rest, bedroom drawings and paintings, installations of beds or pajamas, grief and rage through images, backyard landscapes, environment meditation performance, candid portraits, family portraits, and close observational work.

Anyone can explore this in their own way. What one person could make would be unique from what another person could make. These are just a few examples. There are so many more.

I think your own life is enough. Whatever you’re interested in, whatever you’re skilled at, is enough. Energy, space, material, creating objects, ephemeral work that holds an experience. It can be research. An uncovering. An offering.

I remember wanting to bring my interest in mental health and spiritual health into my work. When I was young, I mentioned it to a prof and they discouraged me from pursuing it. But it was already there. A sadness was seeping through the work. I just wanted to be more open about it and see other artists doing it.

I’m happy that seems to exist more now. When I was in art school, it felt like conceptual or absurd art was especially important. I’m not saying those things aren’t important. My earnest heart just didn’t feel much resonance there.

Maybe every art is conceptual. Maybe every art is absurd. Maybe every art is spiritual. I think there needs to be room for each person’s unique vision to be nurtured.

Now we have things like trauma-informed pedagogy, where consent, openness, and awareness of individual and collective trauma are becoming more intentionally part of how people teach and learn. There seems to be more room for care.

And I think that creates more room for people to follow their own threads of interest, for their head heart and spirit to journey into, and grow. by @weirathmueller

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11 days ago

This is how I write without AI

One sentence at a time

Dictated into my phone if I have low energy

And in this way, I can keep my voice, and my spirit more resonant

It’s the same way I write a letter

I find writing difficult

I used to cry while writing essays

A blank page is intimidating.

So I found a new way that worked for my brain

I learned dictating, or recording, or talking out loud and then writing what I say, writing it down, that is how I have to write

Sometimes when I’m stuck

I tell a friend or my partner what I’m trying to say

And that helps me clarify it

But usually, I know what I want to say.

It just comes up in conversation or meditation

I don’t try to sound fancy

I have an abrupt style that I can smooth out later

Using AI to help with my writing made me realize how I wanted my voice.

AI was too polished

It felt remote

So I do it one sentence at a time. And then I string them together into paragraphs, and edit them. Like I’m doing here. Then I speak them out loud so that I can hear what makes sense, what sounds good, what can be rearranged. by @weirathmueller

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12 days ago

Adding more pieces. Accuracy has less to do with perfection and more to do with attention. That is one thing about realism. It requires attention and presence, and in that way, I find it is a meditation. by @weirathmueller

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12 days ago

I started making art again a few years ago. I was waiting to get better, but my health had taken a turn and eventually I realized I had to start where I was. I had to put aside a lot of what I’d learned about what art was supposed to be—intention, concept, what makes good art or bad art—and just draw what felt easy and joyful. I drew pictures of my daughter and landscapes, and that worked for a while. But eventually it stopped working. I kept trying to simplify things, but I was still having to push myself to show up, and overall I felt bored. I knew I wanted to make work that worked with my body, that excited me and gave me a sense of play. I applied for grants and mentorships and joined some art groups, and I think it was through those connections, with care and time, that I started dreaming again. Old ideas kept coming back—things I’d had in my mind for years that I thought would never go anywhere. Those were actually the things I needed to follow.

It wasn’t one big aha moment. It was a lot of starts and stops: trying something, getting excited, going back to something familiar, getting bored, and trying again. But I’m experimenting again and having so much fun. Each time I figure out something that doesn’t work. I think a big part of it has been choosing things that actually work with my energy—making something small enough that I can play with it. Funny, in a lot of ways I had to go smaller to get bigger. I still care about the work I was getting bored with, and I still get excited about it sometimes. But it wasn’t enough on its own. I need more variety and experimentation. That feeds my spirit. Now I’m feeling this urge to learn again, too. I prop open a drawing book on a book stand while I’m in bed and do an exercise if I feel like it. It’s like cooking: opening a book to a recipe makes me want to make it. I want to copy things, do exercises, study anatomy, perspective and composition, and just go back to the basics for a while. by @weirathmueller

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12 days ago

Leaf and hand—Puzzling a new drawing together, nupastel on pastelmat. Second—layered images of thumbnail with pastelmat, to isolate the area 🧩🎨 by @weirathmueller

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13 days ago

Five limiting beliefs I’ve excavated around art making, and am rebuilding (I’m noticing how many of my beliefs about art are actually beliefs about worth.)

1. I have to be productive to be a good artist.
Instead! I am an artist through my continued relationship with making. Slow, fast, etc
2. I need to work consistently to have a serious practice.
Instead…My practice can respond to my changing capacity and still be meaningful. Breaking routine is part of my work too.
3. If I can’t do something in my studio, independently, I’m failing.
-I can build my practice around supporting myself, my body. I can build it all from bed.
4. I don’t have the skill or training to make the work I want, so I’m less of an artist.
-My skills can grow through making. I can be an artist while I’m learning. I can play and experiment with what skills I have now.
5. I need to prove my worth through what I accomplish.
🪄🪄🪄My worth is inherent. I can make art from curiosity, play (wondering, excitement) rather than using art to prove that I’m worthy.

Again and again I learn that I can start exactly where I am at: with my body, my mind, the spirit I have, the skills I have, and my capacity. And I can ask for help and find community exactly as I am. There is enough here, right now, to experiment, to play.

Start where you’re at. Growing and changing happens anyway.

Oh and again—taking breaks from art if I’m not having fun is part of the process, a way to grieve, reorient. Consciously or subconsciously (Sometimes a block is the body and spirit stopping the mind just to do this) by @weirathmueller

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14 days ago

Testing out my puzzle technique with another image, working from an image of a drawing instead of a photo.
I was wondering: How can I do this without layering photos? My thinking was…Maybe if I got a drawing and then with a separate piece of paper cut a square out of the middle of it…and then sort of moved the paper on top of the drawing. I could sort of tape everything down to keep it secure as I focused on a section…

Anyway, these are some thoughts that went through my mind! by @weirathmueller

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14 days ago