Chiaroscuro

Please welcome first-time contributor Bon, a single parent in her thirties living in the Dandenong Ranges of Victoria, Australia. Bon has been living with Bipolar Disorder her entire adult life, and engages in a variety of creative pursuits, including drawing, drumming, writing, and fashion design, as a way to bring healing, meaning and fulfillment to her life. Spending time alone amidst nature also provides her with inspiration, as well as relief from social pressures and conventional norms that she often finds to be suffocating. Bon hopes to use creativity in all its forms as a tool to transmute feelings of hopelessness and pain into a communication between kindred spirits.

About this photo: “This image conveys my enduring fascination with the relationship between light and dark. From a physical perspective, light is fascinating; the way it manipulates objects and surfaces, effectively seeming to change the very forms it touches. It evokes a variety of moods depending on how it behaves. Darkness, whilst perhaps not as exciting, provides context for light. Neither light nor dark could exist without the other. I see this as a useful metaphor for what I go through emotionally and psychologically regarding bipolar disorder, and what all of us inevitably go through during certain stages of life. We curse the dark times because they ARE difficult, and yet, when the light finally reveals itself, it’s so much brighter; smiles and laughter all the sweeter, simple pleasures more magical, for us having known their absence.” 

Find more from Bon at her blog.

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