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.

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. 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.