In a few weeks, I will be holding an art exhibition featuring selected images from my upcoming novel, Middle Distance. It’s been a long, hard road to get this far, and an occasion for me to turn a period of intense pain into an artistic vision… It’s all that I can do, and to hopefully help others with my observations – shedding a little light in the darkness and to make an offering of empathy.
The journey began four years ago when my husband arrived home from work and had a massive heart attack. He died for a short time, but I resuscitated him with the help of my children. Perhaps the story ended there, where it began? It was the best outcome possible. But the children’s golden childhood’s ended there, and I became immersed in a dark place; a place of trauma – of PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). Throughout that time I wrote and took photographs as a distraction, and as the compulsion that I feel as a creative person.
From the back cover:
At some point in our lives, many of us will experience and live through a terrifying event – the way that we deal with it depends entirely upon the individual.
We follow one woman’s voyage into the middle distance. After a traumatic accident, the mystical world spills over into the present and unravels in a dreamlike sequence of events. “The Middle Distance” the mysterious and horrific space between the beginning and the end, where the mind is a tangled web of fear and delusion. A journey towards the light is the only way forward, a mystical place where the ancient tradition of yoga acts as the golden key.
The book cover
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The writing evolved into my upcoming novel, Middle Distance. The accompanying photographs are to be featured in an art exhibition, Middle Distance in Denmark for the whole month of December.
Heather Gartside 