When I inhabit my earliest memories, I feel the vice of anxiety constricting my body: my little throat tightening, a heavy dread settling in my stomach, hyperawareness of my surroundings. I am frozen, unable to do what I so desperately need to do. But what I need to do is not escape some looming danger – rather, I must carry out some mundane task in the context of my kind and loving family and regular, small-town life. As a kid I had no idea what was going on or why – I only knew to buckle down and push through, stomach churning, trying to control whatever I could to quiet the pressure. I even tried to control the world around me, minute to minute.

It was only well into adulthood that I was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder… learning to hear the scripts of my anxious thoughts and to challenge them…

My anxiety disorder isn’t gone, but I have the tools I need now…. I live unclenched, not seeking to control all aspects of my life. When anxiety visits, as it often does, I greet it and let it visit me without judgment. Learning to live with and through anxiety has also allowed me to help others, sharing my story and all that I have learned.                                                            

- Jamie

“Painting a portrait is akin to a process of stripping away stroke by stroke, attempting to reveal or discover what is hidden. I think that when all the stripping is done and a work is successful, we are left with something closer to truth, beauty or mystery. These, after all, are the invisible things, enclosed by the flesh.”                     

- Dean Bauche

Bauche is a cultural consultant, professional artist, writer, curator, educator, and adjudicator. He has 40 years of cultural and gallery experience as a consultant, Director of Galleries for the City of North Battleford, and the Director and Curator of the Allen Sapp Gallery.