Elysse

Artist's website

"My name is Elysse, I'm 25 and a chronic migraine sufferer. I was trying to figure out why I have often incredible leaps of creativity right before I have an equally incredible migraine and came across your name via a google search that led me to migraine-aura.org.

For me, if the idea before the migraine sticks, it becomes a painting. I make my grandest creative paintings on a large scale (at least 4 foot by 6 foot), no larger than 6 foot by 8 foot (as yet), and many of them have made it onto my website's gallery here.

I was intrigued to find that most of my ideas are in fact geometric or aural as has been suggested in migraine art findings (the smaller scale work is usually the product of an idea that sticks and no resources to stretch a large canvas). What I have come to find is that without my migraines I have no urge to paint, save a passing idea every now and then, so I have learned to give in to the migraines when they come in anticipation of the work I will later accomplish!

Anyway, thank you for your time, for (hopefully) looking at my work. Good luck on your research!"

(Elysse, Email to Klaus Podoll, June 15, 2007)

"It is normally no more than 2 to 3 hours before the migraine itself happens, usually I get so caught up in the creative process that I am surprised when the migraine hits.

I will attatch a few images with brief statements (following each image) to this email, feel free to use or discard whichever ones you feel appropriate."

(Elysse, Email to Klaus Podoll, June 18, 2007)

Elysse, Untitled #5, oil on canvas (4' x 6'), 2005. © 2005 Elysse

"Before the pain, when I close my eyes I often see constantly changing swirls of color. If I allow one mass to collect all of the other colors (that is, without changing the position of my eyes or focus) it becomes a moving, yet uniform, group of swirls that eventually settle in the bottom of my vision. The color mass is often muted, but starts out vibrant."

(Elysse, Email to Klaus Podoll, June 18, 2007)

Elysse, S, oil on canvas (8"x8"), 2006. © 2006 Elysse (for larger version click here)

"When the pain begins, the creativity is over for that moment; I can no longer see and shift the colored masses in my mind's eye. If I have spent too much time pondering on one movement of forms they can become fragmented into millions of tiny stars in blackness, growing larger and larger until they take up my field of vision. At that moment even the faintest light becomes unbearable and the pain begins."

(Elysse, Email to Klaus Podoll, June 18, 2007)

Elysse, Untitled #8, oil on canvas (4'x6'), 2005. © 2005 Elysse

"The vibrant colors at the very beginning of a creative urge often have much to do with the lighting available at the time. This was a daytime migraine, just as the swollen pain was taking over."

(Elysse, Email to Klaus Podoll, June 18, 2007)

Elysse, Untitled #3, oil on canvas (8' x 6'), 2004. © 2004 Elysse

"One of the first ambitious paintings I made following an extreme migraine the previous day, this was an equally extreme project to take on. All canvases over 48" x 36" are hand stretched by me, and on this one I worked furiously through the day stretching and furiously through the night painting for fear of losing the vision that spurned the creativity. This was quite possibly the first piece made after I realized I could partially control the position of the colored masses, how apt that the first large scale piece should resemble a portal. I chose large format because I want the viewer to be enveloped, as I was, in the ethereal vision."

(Elysse, Email to Klaus Podoll, June 18, 2007)

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