Art Raises Awareness

Approximately 20 per cent of Canadians will experience a mental health disorder during their lifetime, and the remaining 80 per cent will have a family member, friend or colleague who deals with mental health issues.

While borderline personality disorder (BPD) is estimated by some counts to affect more people than schizophrenia and bipolar disorder combined, this disability is generally not well understood. Artist Laura Fair-Schulz hopes to change that.

Through her stunning works of art, Fair-Schulz attempts to demystify BPD and “expose the cracks through which people with BPD fall.” Her most recent exhibit, “Recent Works,” in aqueous, oil and drawing media, features images who bearing mythic names, such as “Declining Venus,” “Judith in Melting Snow” and “Ursula’s Illness.” These pictures combine visual references to communicate, in a poetic sense, experience with an “undaunting and yet surprisingly invisible” disorder.

Laura Fair-Schulz is a graduate of Brigham Young University and holds a Masters of Fine Art, specializing in Drawing and Painting. She also attended the Ontario College of Art and George Brown College. She has had numerous group and solo exhibitions at both private and university galleries, and has taught art to children and university students.

For more information or a viewing of Fair-Schulz’s work, contact Linda Hankin at the School of Ideas Gallery in Welland, Ontario, (905) 382-3450, or e-mail her at schoolofideas@on.aibn.com.