Mind's Eye

A journey from illness to healing: A neurodivergent perspective 

Painting Exhibition by Anne R. Laperriere

September 2 - 6, 2025

*Reception: Friday, Sept 5th | 6-8P

**Artist Talk: Saturday, Sept 6th | 2:30-3:30P

*live music by Rene El Jaguar

**with Special guest Slam Poet Euridice L. White 

More About Mind's Eye

I had the courage to begin this series of autobiographical acrylic paintings in 2022. The series is made up of bold, figurative works whose characters, mostly self likenesses, show states of mental health and illness I’ve grown into, out of, and lived with during my lifetime. The viewer is taken into scenes expressing feelings and events such as depression, terror, mania, solitude, and thriving experienced during a lifetime of neurodivergent existence. “Mind’s Eye” speaks about mental illness, wellbeing, and the transformation and healing of the human mind and spirit. 

Colors in the compositions are either confronting and contrasting, or subdued, foreboding and calm. The paint is layered, creating an obsessive history and rich hue. Animal beings and symbolic images appear intermingled with the figures. Paleolithic and Neolithic pattern and sculpture and hints of ancient mysticism also appear, plumbing the depths of the psyche and communicating in a primal language of emotion and notion.  Brushstrokes are broad and emotive or tiny and repetitive. A carefully considered, bold composition of shapes and human/animal bodies is seen from afar, while tedious detail work is enjoyed up close.

More About Anne 

Anne Laperriere is a multi-disciplinary artist who grew up in and around Detroit, Michigan. Here, she spent her childhood lost in art making, branching out to other activities such as dissecting deceased birds in the backyard, melting plastic animals in the microwave, and experimenting with her mother’s cosmetics. 

Her lifelong obsession with art led her to earn a scholarship for study of sculpture at the Cleveland Institute of Art. She experienced working and interning in the field of museum taxidermy and exhibit creation at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, and the Smithsonian’s exhibits department. When bouts with undiagnosed bipolar disorder became challenging, Anne relocated away from the harsh winters in Detroit and Cleveland to her current Winston Salem, North Carolina. Here she worked for fifteen years in an operating room, while creating a painting series of inspirations experienced on the job. 

In the present, Anne is employed as a faux-finisher, and in her basement studio  builds a series of paintings about her experiences through mental illness and wellbeing. She has turned to art making as a therapy, an expression, and a means of communication about her journey as a human being through existence.  

Learn more about Anne by visiting her website here and following her in IG: @anne_ruth_laperriere