My biopsies for breast cancer were yesterday. Chris had taken the day off the day before but turned out that was only the consultation. So here I was going to the biopsies with my good pal, Denise, who, like me, has Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). Given her dozen alters and my 13, we brought quite a few people along to the waiting room of the Radiology Department at the hospital. And then there were the visual and verbal agnosias of my autism to navigate; the meaning deafness, meaning blindness and face blindness. All becomes rather Alice in Wonderland in that context. Read the rest of this entry »

OMG! You’ve got cancer! Cancer is a word, not a sentence. I always liked that saying by the anti-cancer council.

I’ve handled that word a few times in my 47 years. Read the rest of this entry »

It was always very hard for me to talk about the ‘fruit salad’ of my parents. In the autism world there was MASSIVE taboo to speak of having anything other than wonderful, loving, well adjusted parents… otherwise one was ‘an abuse case’, everything about one’s developmental disabilities was then cast into some ‘pity box’, one couldn’t possibly have be a REAL ‘autistic’ because ‘real autistics’ were only and ever then born to ‘healthy’ parents. Read the rest of this entry »

DUEL: The Aerosol Assassin

Exhibition Opening 6-8pm July 21 2011
Exhibition runs July 19 – August 06 2011

The latest exhibition by Melbourne based graffiti maestro Duel represents this artists progression, passion and individuality. Duel’s new works have multi dimensional brilliance, are like an untamed life force, and bounce off the canvases immersing you in their energy. Colors and splats, ribbons and weaves, take you on a journey through Duels past, his development of style, and future innovations.

Kick Gallery is located at 4 Peel Street Collingwood & open Tuesday-Friday11am-6pm & Saturday 12-5pm

For further information contact Kick Gallery on 0412 243 818 or email info@kickgallery.com

I took my father to therapy last week. He’s been dead since 1995, around 16 years now, but I took him along anyway. I packed up his letters, objects from the different Jacks, and took them along. I laid them out on the floor and picked up each in turn, me and my alters addressing each father that shared that one body of his.
Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve always had a strong reaction to images of Barry Humphries. Read the rest of this entry »

This month’s artwork is titled ‘Iris’.
It is 26 cm x 42 cm, acrylic on paper. Some of the irises look like dancers, butterflies, nudes, fairies. It’s a whimsical painting, full of movement. It is gently joyous. I hope you enjoy the painting. You can see it and others in my online gallery.

Warmly,
Donna Williams *)
http://www.donnawilliams.net

In 1970, when I was 7 years old, my family had moved from the small rented house into a big two story house in Preston. In went a built in swimming pool, well supplied bar, snooker table, chandeliers, mirror walls, and filled with antiques and racks of guns displayed openly on the walls. There was a revolver in the drawer of the front dresser just inside the front door. Read the rest of this entry »

From 1969-1979 a famous Australian artist, Donald Friend, had a house in Bali where he had up to 20 Balinese ‘houseboys’ who stayed at his home. Donald Friend kept diaries detailing his pedophilia there with boys aged 9-12 years old. He finally bequeathed these diaries to the National Library on the condition they publish them. Read the rest of this entry »

Those who grow up meaning deaf (verbal agnosia) often have exceptionally good use of peripheral vision. Those with a form of meaning blindness called Simultagnosia in which one sees the part and loses the whole often employ peripheral vision as a means of filtering out the level of incoming information they’d otherwise get through rods in the front of the eyes as a means of reducing sensory flooding, allowing the brain more time to process what’s left in a similar way that some therapeutic tinted lenses do too. A recent study showed peripheral vision is also more highly developed among those who deaf from an early age. Read the rest of this entry »