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WORK TITLE: The Migraine Book
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://leacarmichael.com/
CITY: New York
STATE: NY
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY:
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born in New York, NY.
EDUCATION:Hampshire College, B.A.; Vassar College; Kansas City Art Institute; studied at Parsons and The Art Students’ League.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Artist, illustrator.
WRITINGS
Contributed illustrations to books, including The Literary Garden, edited by Duncan Brine, and The Wild Game and Fish Cookbook, by Jim Bryant.
SIDELIGHTS
In her artbook, The Migraine Book: A Memoir in Pictures, lifelong artist Lea Carmichael used her artistic skills to share her feelings of the debilitating migraines she suffers. She studied art at the Kansas City Art Institute and The Art Students’ League and holds a bachelor’s degree from Hampshire College. In her studio on the Hudson River in New York, she uses various mediums, like painting, illustration, graphic design, scenic painting, and photography. Carmichael has working on a series called Patterns of Nature with hand-colored photographs of abstractions from nature. She said on the Lea Carmichael website, “the process of art is what keeps me going.”
Carmichael has held shows of her work at Hampshire College, Irvington’s Town Hall Theater, Martucci Gallery, River Gallery in Irvington, and Donald Gallery in Dobbs Ferry, New York. She has also illustrated several books, including The Literary Garden, edited by Duncan Brine, and The Wild Game and Fish Cookbook, by Jim Bryant. Carmichael also paints abstraction, a feeling of “letting go of exterior reference to let intuition take over,” she explained on the River Arts 2018 Studio Tour website.
In 2018, Carmichael published, The Migraine Book: A Memoir in Pictures, which collects her drawings over the past fifteen years while experiencing migraines. The drawings reflect her reaction to migraines. With the onset of one, she grabs crayons and materials, reacting instantly to her revenge against and pain during her migraines. Varying styles of artwork represent horrifying, gruesome, and sometimes funny emotions that migraineurs will recognized. As the artist evokes a sense of self under siege, Carmichael “renders her experiences with migraines in a series of folksy, colorful crayon drawings collected in this surprisingly poignant book,” according to a Publishers Weekly reviewer. The reviewer added that other migraine sufferers will find solace through commiseration in Carmichael’s artwork.
With the drawings, Carmichael adds explanatory text to expand on the artwork. She describes the onset of the migraines, their debilitating effects, and her all-consuming impairment. Motifs in the artwork cover musical instruments, balloon figures, ghoulish self-portraits, bulging eyes, and zigzag patterns. When suffering a migraine, the pain shoots across Carmichael’s forehead and behind her right eye. Her eye features prominently in her artwork with distorted lines and colors indicating pain. On the Rivertowns Enterprise website, Carmichael told Patricia Robert: “I found that if I were able to draw, something, anything, I could combat the pain,” she said. “It didn’t go away, but it allowed me to do something active that let me both combat and express my feelings of anger and frustration.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Publishers Weekly, January 29, 2018, review of The Migraine Book: A Memoir in Pictures, p. 186.
ONLINE
Lea Carmichael website, http://leacarmichael.com (July 1, 2018), author profile.
River Arts 2018 Studio Tour, http://2018studiotour.riverarts.org/lea-carmichael/ (July 1, 2018), author profile.
Rivertowns Enterprise, http://www.rivertownsenterprise.net/ (January 6, 2017), Patricia Robert, review of The Migraine Book.
Art has been my passion my entire life. At Kansas City Art Institute and Hampshire College I learned the foundations of my trade. From there, I have enjoyed many ways of doing art---painting and drawing, illustration, graphic design, scenic painting, teaching, photography. I now work from a studio on the Hudson River in New York.
My recent work has focused on a series that I call Pattern
s of Nature. They are hand-colored photographs of abstractions from nature. At the same time I am always keeping up with my sketchbooks, which include many different subjects, media, and styles. I have a specific series of drawings that are about migraines, which I hope to publish as a book someday.
The word “process” comes up constantly as I try to describe my work. While I am fascinated, and often (but not always) delighted by the pictures that result from my work, the process of art is what keeps me going. It has always been the force that has driven my life, the lens through which the world makes sense.
Please feel free to contact me with any questions or comments that you have about my work.
Lea Carmichael
Author, Illustrator | Irvington, New York, USA | Website
Lea Carmichael was born in New York City and grew up in Montclair, New Jersey. She lives in Irvington, NY. She attended Vassar College, Kansas City Art Institute, and graduated with a B.A. from Hampshire College. She has also studied at Parsons and The Art Students' League.
Lea loves to draw, and works in many media, including pastel, paint, and photography. She has enjoyed many years painting sets for community shows at Irvington's Town Hall Theater. She has had shows at the Martucci Gallery and the River Gallery in Irvington, the Donald Gallery in Dobbs Ferry, NY, and at Hampshire College. Her studio is in Dobbs Ferry, and every April she participates in the RiverArts Studio Tour.
She has illustrated several books, including The Literary Garden, Edited by Duncan Brine, and The Wild Game and Fish Cookbook, by Jim Bryant. She also does graphic work for arts organizations.
Her website is Leacarmichael.com
The Migraine Book: A Memoir in Pictures
Publishers Weekly. 265.5 (Jan. 29, 2018): p186.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
The Migraine Book: A Memoir in Pictures
Lea Carmichael. Paintmoth, $15 trade paper (130p) ISBN 978-0-9883599-7-0
An artist renders her experiences with migraines in a series of folksy, colorful crayon drawings collected in this surprisingly poignant book. Carmichael, a visual artist living in upstate New York, reflects on her earliest encounters with the condition, noting that, as a child, she witnessed her mother's debilitating symptoms. She goes on to describe her own onset of migraines and to articulate the often all-consuming impairment it has caused her over the years: "The migraine hunkers down in my head, a homunculus driving an oil-well-sized drill-bit deep into the raw, swollen nerves of my brain." During one attack, Carmichael angrily grabbed crayons and began to draw. This led to a degree of respite--or, at the least, distraction--from the pain. Her collection represents her ongoing attempts to grapple with the condition, while producing an oeuvre of distinctive pieces marked by rage, despair, arid sometimes humor. The drawings feature repeating motifs of piercing instruments and decapitation; naif balloon figures; fractured and ghoulish self-portraits with bulging eyeballs and grimacing mouths; and kaleidoscope-like zigzagging patterns. At their core lies a sense of self under siege. Readers intimately familiar with migraines will find solace through commiseration in Carmichael's book. Color illus. (BookLife)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"The Migraine Book: A Memoir in Pictures." Publishers Weekly, 29 Jan. 2018, p. 186. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A526116584/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=dcadfc11. Accessed 27 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A526116584
Painful affliction leads to pictorial memoir
JANUARY 6, 2017
BY PATRICIA ROBERT
Four of Lea Carmichael’s drawings from “The Migraine Book”
The 40 drawings on display at the Irvington Public Library may be cartoonish in nature, something like a child might draw; or horrific, depicting a decapitation perhaps; or graphic, showing a screw in the eye. But they all have one thing in common.
“They are about how I was feeling at the time, and that was when I was suffering from a migraine,” artist Lea Carmichael of Irvington said in a recent interview.
Poster-sized blow-ups from drawings included in Carmichael’s “The Migraine Book: A Memoir in Pictures” will be on view in the library’s Martucci Gallery through Jan. 30, with an opening reception tomorrow (Jan. 7), from 1 to 4 p.m.
Carmichael, 62, who has a studio in Dobbs Ferry, has suffered from migraines for most of her adult life, but not from the nausea or incapacitation that debilitates others. Still, she experiences excruciating pain across her forehead and behind her right eye. That right eye is a constant in her art — an eye usually distorted by lines and colors indicating pain.
“Some 15 years ago, I found that if I were able to draw, something, anything, I could combat the pain,” she said. “It didn’t go away, but it allowed me to do something active that let me both combat and express my feelings of anger and frustration. So I would pick up whatever was on my bedside table — a pastel, a pencil, a watercolor pencil, a felt-tip marker, even a roller-ball pen, and draw.”
“None of these were drawn with intent,” she continued. “They were spontaneous, intuitive. The drawings don’t have names. I don’t like the narrative to define the visual; I let the visual define itself. But I do include writing in some of the drawings in this collection and I call it the adventures of Mrs. Yamhead.
“Mrs. Yamhead, like myself, had to go to a party while suffering with a migraine,” she explained. “I have Mrs. Yamhead saying to this person who is trying to engage her/me in conversation, ‘Don’t you see that my eye is as big as a plate?’”
“The Migraine Book” contains 11 chapters, each depicting a different aspect of the affliction, and includes such descriptive titles as “Big Eye and Full Frontal,” “Raw, Disfigured, and Overflowing with Pain,” “Masks” and “At Its Mercy.” The book’s introduction describes Carmichael’s history of migraines, how the book came to be, and reactions to the drawings from fellow migraine sufferers.
As evidenced by the adventures of Mrs. Yamhead, there is also a touch of humor.
Carmichael is pleased with the blow-up prints of her drawings for the exhibition. “This has given my drawings a whole new life — a wow factor — that is very exciting,” she said.
Carmichael has worked in a number of art forms — painting, photography, graphic design, and illustration. Earlier work includes a series entitled “Patterns of Nature,” a collection of hand-colored photographs of abstractions from nature, and “New Work-Still Lifes,” which is done in pastels. She has also painted stage sets, contributed graphic designs on a pro bono basis, taught an after-school workshop at Dows Lane Elementary School, and tutored at St. Andres Church in Yonkers. Carmichael attended the Kansas City Art Institute for two years and received a BA with a major in fine arts from Hampshire College.
Carmichael and her husband, Lee Richardson, have lived in Irvington for 28 years. Their eldest son, Colin, who lives in Hawthorne, edited “The Migraine Book,” and their second son, Thomas, who lives at home, scanned the drawings for the exhibition. Their daughter, Annie, lives in California. All three children attended Irvington Middle School, with Thomas and Annie graduating from Irvington High School.
While I have been focused on my book, “The Migraine Book: A Memoir in Pictures” in recent years, this year I’ve chosen to feature another genre that I have worked in most of my life: abstraction.
It fascinates me to try to create images that have no reference to the narrative world, letting go of exterior reference to let intuition take over, playing with line, color, shape and pattern.
This letting go can be a lovely, spiritual experience. The process is one of making a mark, or cutting and gluing, then stopping long enough to wonder, wordlessly, “What happens next?”
At the Studio Tour, The Migraine Book will also be available, as well as some of my figurative work.