ARTIST IN RESIDENCE
MICHELE DICKSON

The Artist in Residence program is part of Workman Arts’ Rendezvous with Madness Festival and is in collaboration with Tangled Art + Disability. By providing time and resources, we believe this can support the development of a body of work to become exhibition ready for a solo show at the Tangled Art + Disability gallery vitrine space in the Spring. We offer this opportunity to a Workman Arts member who has not or has minimally exhibited their artwork, and would benefit from a solo exhibition. 

Michele Dickson is our inaugural Artist in Residence for the 2023/24 year. Her upcoming solo exhibition “CRIP CARE: I live here, instead” will be presented at Tangled Arts in their window vitrine March 25th-April 20th, 2024. 

“I am thrilled at being given this opportunity to work with Workman Arts and Tangled Art + Disability! Making and showcasing art that deals with crip intimacy is a huge dream of mine. With these drawings, I show the close bond that a PSW (personal support worker) has with their client, and the juxtaposition of quietness, along with the mundane chores of intimate, daily life. I enjoyed making these drawings and I hope I’ve accomplished what I set out to do with this work.” 

Michele Dickson is a disabled, self-taught, multi-disciplinary artist, poet, and writer of fiction and non-fiction, and she lives with a positive mindset. She has overcome many hardships, as well as living on ODSP, but she maintains a strong ethical way of being. She works in pastel, coloured pencil, acrylic, printmaking, graphite, watercolour, and pen and ink. Michele is invested in anti-colonialism and does what she can to honour local Indigenous peoples. She is chronically ill and mentally ill, where her art shows the struggles that come with her lived experience. Michele identifies as a deaf, low vision, asexual, crip, spoonie, and plus-sized artist. After a hospital injury Michele began to use her non-dominant left hand to draw and now is a practised SouthPaw. Michele attempts to show feelings of surrender, hope, passion, joy, and love with the daily challenges of being disabled and ill in her work. Beauty, darkness, and suffering is also present in all her work. 

@whitefawn64 + @missdeesaccount

Special thanks to our collaborators and funders on the Artist in Residence program: