Janet Harris South Yorkshire, United Kingdom

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I am an art therapist and a mixed media artist based in the north of England. I explore residual memories of landscapes and environments where I lived and worked pre-pandemic, the changes that are occurring and how these affect our sense of being connected to places.

During the pandemic, I had to stay indoors for a year and when I started to go out, I caught covid which became Long Covid. For the past 3 years, opportunities to explore the landscape - which was an essential part of my process for making art - became very limited. I am now developing a series of exercises for people with Long Covid that aim to address the obstacles to going out. The exercises draw upon my experience of doing art therapy, combined with recent research into the effectiveness of art therapy in fostering new neural connections. The process starts with photographs and plain air sketches, exploring what enables me to engage with a place, alongside the obstacles to being there. Tools from an international rehabilitation programme for Long Covid are used to support the process of exploration. These include mindfulness, yoga nidra, visualising, and breath work. I use watercolours, pencil, crayon, pastel and acrylic during this process. The sketches are used to reflect on the process of managing to go out while dealing with a long term and disabling condition. They may also become finished work, and may be used as a reference to producing larger works which include acrylic on board, watercolours, collage and encaustic.