Turning a Scribble into Something Beautiful: Christine Turcott Shares About Life, Autism, and Using Art to Enrich the World
“You can make something very beautiful out of a scribble…it applies to many things in life, not just the way I do my art. It’s like they say “money doesn’t buy happiness”; you can turn anything into something beautiful.”
This January, the A.WARE Team had a long-awaited conversation with Christine Turcotte, a Legal Assistant and self-taught artist. In this interview, A.WARE’s Executive Director, Koby, Director of Operations, Tim, and Director of Outreach, Alice, talk to Christine about her journey to creative expression and getting diagnosed with ADHD and Autism later in life.
*This interview transcript has been edited for concision and clarity.
Koby: Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Christine: Well, I'm originally from Montreal, Quebec. I lived in Toronto for many, many years; I actually just moved back to the province of Quebec. I work as a legal assistant and I am, well, I can’t really say I'm an artist because I never took formal training. It kind of started naturally when I was younger and had a lot of anxiety. I found that doodling, in class, helped me concentrate. So it all started from doodling in class to concentrate and listen without actually looking at the teacher. That’s me.
Tim: I’m wondering what is a day in your life like? How is it balancing your work life with your creative pursuits?
Christine: It’s a little bit difficult, but I’ve been doing it for a while, so I’m used to it now. A big part of being autistic, which I was only formally diagnosed with a couple years ago, is masking. I’ve pretty much been masking all my life. At first, I didn’t understand what masking meant when I started to learn more about being autistic. Now that I've known for the last couple years, I recognize when I do it. In the beginning, I thought “well does that mean you act fake?” – I consider myself the least fake person on Earth, because I just say what I feel – but, I work in a corporate environment at a big law firm, and you have to do all the niceties and the proper things. Not that I’m improper, but you can’t say things like “Oh, cool!” and stuff like that when you speak. You have to be more proper. That was my disguise. Also, it’s a bit of a contradiction because I’m super friendly, but I’m also a loner.
It’s work that I don’t necessarily enjoy doing but I find very interesting. It drains me mentally because I hyper-focus and when you’re ADHD-autistic you have some weaknesses and strengths. In my job, I’m extremely good at the stuff I’m good at, but there’s a part of the job of being a legal-assistant that I’m terrible at. It’s been a big challenge trying to explain that, because it’s received with the same comments I used to get in school. Such as, “How come you’re so smart, but for this kind of stuff you just don’t get it?” That’s what I’ve tried to explain to them. It’s a bit of a toll mentally, not in a negative way but it drains me. But I get through my days, and life goes on. You just do what you have to do.
I did it all this time, not even knowing I was autistic, so now I recognize when I’m overstressed and all the signs I’ve been learning about as I discover more about being autistic. I kind of knew I had ADHD in my thirties, but again, I went through life as a young adult and child, not knowing any of that. So basically, I’ve been drawing almost every night (well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration because every night is a lot of nights!), but most weeknights. When my kids were little, I did it when they were sleeping, and I've always found a way to put in some artwork almost every night since the nineties. You can imagine how many drawings and artworks I have. I found that that helped me purge whatever stresses I had, enabling me to sit down and release. It’s hard to explain, but it was an ‘art therapy’ for a long time, without me even realizing it.
Alice: I think it’s very often that we hear a lot about how when you’re a part of the corporate world, you can’t develop other hobbies, so it’s really refreshing to hear that you were able to develop strategies and that it worked out for you. If you feel comfortable sharing, what drove you to get assessed for autism?
Christine: Many things. They say that when you’re autistic it’s genetic. That’s what I’ve been reading, but that doesn’t mean every offspring or every child will have it. When my son was little, he got assessed for ADHD, and that’s how the whole thing came to light to me, and I thought “Oh! There’s people with learning disabilities.” My son was pretty hyper, had all these little quirks, and was a picky eater; he got diagnosed with ADHD. Before I didn’t really know that in my time; when I went to school they didn’t talk about that.
Throughout life, you go through different periods where you have bigger stresses, life changes, and you react in certain ways. What happened was I had a life event that caused me a great deal of anxiety, stress, and a sort of depression. There wasn’t a big talk about mental illness back then, or even an openness about being depressed or anxious. So I consulted and got an assessment, in my thirties, when my kids were still fairly young, and I was diagnosed with ADHD, anxiety, depression, and NLD (a non-verbal learning disability).
NLD was a misdiagnosis, it's kind of similar to being autistic, but it's not well known. Life went on. I recognized the ADHD traits in me, but then I had these other things I would go through because ADHD and autism contradict each other. But when you have both it's hard to give an example. Long story short, what really drove me to get assessed was getting put on ADHD medications at the recommendation of a doctor, and that messed me up. Not saying anything bad about them, it works for some people. But for me personally, because I was also autistic, but nobody knew, whatever they were giving me, wasn’t working for me. There’s a lot of autistic people that have difficulty with medications. If a person only has ADHD, some medications can be a great help for them. But for me it wasn’t.
So just by chance, I picked up a book – which I can’t remember the name of, but it's about the link between genius and learning disabilities – and started to read about everything from dyslexia to OCD. I read about autism, and it started from there. I consulted again, going to my family doctor, and I said I think I’m autistic. I used the term “aspergergs” – though, I know its not used anymore – but that was how it was described in the book. The doctor started laughing and said “you?”; he was a really cool young doctor. But I just pursued it. Then I got assessed by a doctor in Toronto and he said “you’re pretty much textbook.” What really got me to pursue it is, again, another life event that made me have a meltdown and shutdown. At the time I didn’t know that it was called a meltdown and I didn’t know then that you subsequently have a shut down – but now I know all that. These are things that triggered me in my life to get help and assessed. That’s the long story.
Koby: It must be really interesting to learn about all these different causes for the things you had been experiencing. In the same vein, how did getting diagnosed later in life impact you? Did you notice any changes after your diagnosis? Any changes in your life habits, or things you have noticed about yourself?
Christine: Yes! Lot’s of changes, but they are still all the same – let me explain. I like to arrange stuff, what they call a stim. My place is always spick and spam. It’s kind of a running joke in my family. Every time someone comes over they say, “oh that’s there now” or “those pictures on that wall now!”. It’s not all the time, but I learned to accept it. At first, I used to ask “what is wrong with me, why do I keep doing this?” But now I know there is absolutely nothing wrong with me, it’s a way to self-regulate. I enjoy having a really neat place, with everything in its place. I don’t feel so bad about spending time doing that, whereas before I felt guilty.
It’s changed mostly in positive aspects. For myself, when I feel a certain way, I recognize what’s going to happen, and I know what to do – it helps me go through whatever it is. For example, I’m still working through the same law firm. They have officers all over Canada and they happen to have a small one in Quebec City, which is the transfer I requested to be close to family. Now I have to start working in French. It’s my mother tongue, but it takes me double the amount of time to write a French email because I haven’t done it in a while even though I know how to spell, write, and speak. In the first week, by Thursday, I was like “oh gosh, what’s happening I can feel it coming.” So I did self-care things to help me get through it. It is not a miracle cure, but it helps.
However, there were and are some challenging parts of it. For instance, telling my family about the diagnosis, and recognizing my son is also probably autistic (and he’s in his early thirties). But there is a stigma around that. They don’t understand. I don’t know what they think – my son, aunts, uncles, etc. – when I tell them; they are not educated that autism is different for females, and that it's a spectrum. You have to explain these things. That part has been very draining for me, but for the most part it's been really good for me; it’s made a positive change in me. I’m more confident because before I thought something was wrong with me.
Tim: Going back to your doodling hobby, I was wondering why art is so meaningful to you?
Cheryl: It’s meaningful to me because I’ve always used it to bring people joy, to help people. For a couple years I was a volunteer at the Covenant House (2007, 2008). I decided out of the blue, one day, to take my black and white artworks, looking for a place to volunteer, and Covenant House happened to be right near my work. I liked the idea because everyone helps seniors or little children, but not very many people back then were helping teens.
I just went there without thinking much about it and said “I do these, I would like to volunteer” and it took off. It really took off. We had a large group that grew every time I went once a week, and it enabled the youth to express themselves through my template of artworks. They would add colours of wherever they were from originally – a lot of them were refugees, for instance – or if you had a troubled teen that say got kicked out of their house or their parents had issues with drugs, they would write poetry next to the art work and decorate it. Just little things like that – I saw how it helped them.
When I got home, I would scan them and go to the printers, get copies of their poems on my artwork, or their designs based on my artwork, and give them a nice printout; they would be very proud of that. This made me very happy to do it for them and with them, of course.
Alice: We see your art quite often at the A.WARE Foundation, and we were wondering if you could explain a bit of the process behind how you create your art. What mediums do you use and what is the meaning behind it?
Christine: The whole theory behind my art is that you can make something very beautiful out of a scribble. You can apply that to anything in life.
When I started – and I still do it – I would just take a blank canvas and sharpies. As I went on throughout the years, I started buying art markers that cost a lot more money (they are acetone free and the colour doesn’t fade over time), so my art became better quality. Fast forward to another few years, I started buying paint pens. That evolved throughout the years, and I still have most of the artworks. I’ve given a lot and sold a few.
Basically, I would just take a blank canvas and just do it – a line, a curve, anything like that. Then I would do all the black, add colour, and flow with it. There is nothing that I can say that is a technique. I’m a person that cannot look at a landscape or picture and reproduce it – I can barely draw a house. But I just doodle and you can see faces or animals in it. I have no idea how that happens. Honestly. That’s my answer to that. I don’t have a specific technique. Part of it is the repetitive movement, which I enjoy. Although every artwork of mine is different, they are all the same.
Kobe: That’s amazing. You said earlier that you don’t consider yourself an artist because you haven’t gone through art school and stuff. I would completely disagree; this is your process. You make something beautiful out of lines and what feels natural to you. And I think that is more impressive than being able to draw a house, or capture the landscape.
Christine: Thank you, I appreciate that. Because I struggle with imposter syndrome, a little bit, when it comes to that. For example, some artists get commissioned to do something but I have a problem with my performance anxiety. It’s similar to when one of the lawyers at work says “I’m giving you this to do,” and then stands there and watches me; I cannot do anything. I go blank. It’s the same thing when someone commissions an artwork. I can’t do it. You just have to pick from what I have. I have an anxiety about the performing aspect, even though, like you said, you think it’s nice. If you ask me to do something that looks a specific way, I can’t do it.
Kobe: Yeah! Your art is about you and what you do in your spare time. Not everything needs to be a performance or made for someone else. You previously mentioned that you worked with the Covenant House and I wanted to ask in what ways do you think that art can help others and bring about social change.
Christine: I think, and I touched upon this a little before, in the case of the youth, many of them have a hard time expressing themselves. I remember clearly my adolescent years, and in fact, have diaries from the time I was thirteen. When I was younger I used to write a lot. A lot of youth have a difficult time expressing themselves and opening up to adults. Especially if they are different. I found that it was helpful for self-expression.
Also, I donated artwork for an autism organization in 2008, without knowing I was autistic myself, so you can sort of brighten people’s lives just by sharing your creations and the bright colours. It brings them joy. For example, when my son and daughter were teenagers, they would bring friends over and I would have my artwork all over the place. They would spend hours coloring and it was a joyful thing.
In terms of social change, I’m not sure how to answer that. Iit would be a matter of someone sharing their talent and using it for a good purpose.
Kobe: I think the way you bring about joy is in itself a message for the people that see art.
Christine: Thank you, and it helps me too, when I’m feeling down, and I use all these colours. It’s just really helpful for your psyche.
Tim: One final question: what is something that you would say to neurotypical people or people who think differently than you. How would you recommend advocating for neurodiverse communities and dealing with the stigma surrounding autism?
Christine: I find that it’s very hard to explain to a neurotypical person what being autistic means or feels like. For example, one thing I would like to express is that I’m very – not blunt – but I say exactly what I mean. It has hurt some people in the past even though I had zero intention of offending anybody. I just say it as a matter of fact. I say what it is. I think neurotypical people tend not to be able to do that and they beat around the bushes. It’s not their fault, I’m not criticizing them at all. But I would like for neurotypical people to understand that when autistic people express themselves it’s not intended to offend anybody. I mean, obviously it’s a spectrum. So how I am at work and how I mask is not for example how I will speak to my loved ones, my children, I will be more honest with them about what they are doing and will give my opinion maybe too much. But it's because I care so much and I over-empathize so much, so I have a problem with empathy in the sense that I have too much of it. So I can be a little overbearing to my children. Then that causes difficulties sometimes, when they don’t understand that your motives are out of love and care. My big message is to help neurotypical people to understand that part of being autistic.
Alice: Alright, thank you so much for Christine.
Kobe: Yes, I can’t stop thinking about what you said about turning something like a scribble into something very beautiful – that’s an amazing motto to live by.
Christine: Thank you, I think it applies to many things in life, not just the way I do my art. It’s like they say “money doesn’t buy happiness”; you can turn anything into something beautiful.
Thank you Christine Turcotte for spending the time to talk with the A.WARE Foundation to share honest anecdotes and provide us with wisdom on artistic processes and neurodiversity diagnosis.
