Save the date & join us for our July online artist peer group.
Established in 2015 our artist peer groups are an opportunity for artists exploring health and wellbeing in their practice to gain feedback and support on their projects, ideas or challenges that they are facing. The space is for active feedback, meaning that artists aren’t sharing finished works, but asking for specific support from others attending the session. Together we pool resources and provide feedback in a supportive environment.
Our 2 artists for this session are Lottie Bolster, whose work explores her experience as a mother with disordered eating, and Marisa Crane, whose performance work explores her experience of being late diagnosed Autistic. Read on for more information.
Want to share your work at a future group? Fill out our application form.
Cost.
Free / Pay What You Can (suggested £5)
Images: Lottie Bolster
About Lottie Bolster.
Lottie is a visual artist and mental health advocate whose work challenges stereotypes around health and wellbeing through mixed media storytelling. Her work is rooted in her personal experience of mental ill-health and her background in clinical neuroscience. Together, these experiences have made Lottie acutely aware of the widespread misconceptions surrounding mental and neurological illness and inspired her commitment to challenge these false narratives through art. Lottie retrained as an artist and has since exhibited widely, including at CERN and Somerset House.
Since becoming a mother in 2020, Lottie’s work has centred on parenting and mental health. Her work Balance explores relationships with food: What does it look like to have both a “healthy” diet and a “healthy” relationship with food and exercise? And as a parent, how do you foster these in your child, especially when you don’t know yourself?
“Balance is a series of 32 collages exploring my experience as a mother with disordered eating, navigating the often confusing and conflicting messages around health and parenting. Each piece combines National Health guidelines with documentary photography from my family life, highlighting how official advice can feel overwhelming, triggering, or guilt-inducing—especially when it clashes with lived reality. The work aims to help parents, particularly those with eating disorders, feel seen, supported, and more confident in finding their own balance. I’m seeking advice on how best to develop and share the work to achieve this ambition.”
Find out more about Lottie:
Images: Marisa Crane
About Marisa Crane.
A neurodivergent artist, Marisa’s expansive portfolio includes multi-layered autobiographical pieces in mediums including performance, installation, assemblage and photography. With a BA Fine Art from the Ruskin School of Art (2018), she received a high distinction for her MA Creative Practice (University of Cumbria) final piece ‘Down (And Around)’- a clowning performance breaking ground for a vocabulary for the late-diagnosed Autistic experience.
Her current practice takes interest in the carnivalesque as a challenger to dominant modes of being through the invitation of humour and chaos; linking this to current political discourse surrounding creativity in relation to healthcare, disability, gender, and activism.
“I’ll be discussing my MA performance piece ‘Down (And Around)’, which marks the start of of my exploration of the medium of clowning to create a language for the late-diagnosed Autistic identity. Having made this in the summer of last year, I’m looking for support with alternative ways to develop my clowning persona and accessible ways of performing, as well as ways to find validation and ways to develop the work when I don’t have access to a strong local contemporary arts scene or funding.”
Find out more about Marisa: