It has been a long time since I have been writing a blog here. I do a lot of writing but mostly over at Substack.

But I always wanted to have this place here for my longer thoughts and sometimes it just doesn't feel like there are a lot of things unsaid. But there always are some and I just need to not be too lazy to write them down.

For example, I have been diagnosed with AuDHD, which is the combination of autism and ADHD. There is a lot of talking about this online, so I won't go into detail about it, but I wanted to talk about how this reflects in my art and my life. Especially with relationships; to my husband, my dog, and friends.

But most will be about art and dog.

So many people always asked me why my art is only black and white. And for a long time I did not really have an answer. I usually said that I simply don't know my way around color. Which is partly true. Color always feels a bit overwhelming when I work with it. Some people seem to move through color effortlessly. Trust me, I have tried. But it never feels satisfying, it always feel like totally wrongly placed.

Black and white is different. It is clean. The contrasts are clear. When I look at it, my brain feels calm.

Only recently I started to understand that this might actually have something to do with how my brain processes information.

Many autistic people experience something called sensory processing differences. The brain takes in more detail than average and often has difficulty filtering what is important and what is not. Color adds a huge amount of information to an image. Hue, saturation, temperature, harmony. All of these variables compete for attention.

Black and white removes most of that complexity. What remains are structure, rhythm, light and form.

For my brain this feels almost like someone cleaned up a noisy room. (which is THE BEST thing)

There is also something interesting happening neurologically. Visual processing in the brain is divided into different pathways. One system processes color and fine detail. Another system is more focused on contrast, movement, and spatial relationships. High contrast images, like black ink on white paper, strongly activate this contrast-based pathway. For people who are sensitive to visual overload, this can actually feel much easier to process.

In other words: black and white reduces the amount of decisions my brain has to make.

It is almost like visual silence.

The funny thing is that people sometimes interpret the lack of color as a stylistic decision, or as something dramatic or conceptual. But for me it is much simpler. It is the visual environment in which my brain can think.

Color feels like a crowd.

Black and white feels like space.

And maybe this is also why my work often revolves around creatures, small worlds, and strange encounters. They exist in a place where things are reduced to their essential shapes. A place where the noise is a little softer.

Which, as it turns out, is exactly what my brain seems to prefer.

This might also explain why puppets and creatures became such an important part of my work.

Puppets are strangely precise beings. They are reduced versions of life. A few materials, a few movements, sometimes just two eyes and a body. And yet they carry emotion, personality, even intention.

I think my brain likes that kind of reduction.

In a way puppets are the black and white version of people. They remove many of the social signals that can be overwhelming in real life and leave behind something simpler: presence, gesture, attention. When I work with them I can focus on very small things.

It is a world where subtle signals become very clear.

Black and white works the same way in my drawings and sculptures. It takes away one layer of information so another layer becomes visible.

And then there is my dog.

Dogs are wonderful for an AuDHD brain in a similar way. They communicate in a system that is incredibly direct. Body language, tone, rhythm, proximity. They don't require you to decode complicated social subtext. If a dog is happy, you see it immediately. If they are unsure, you see that too. Well, if you want to see it, that is. Most people don't really make the effort to learn their communication, which, in my opnion, makes the relationship less one on eye level.

But their world is structured around very clear signals.

Training Noki has made me realize how much I appreciate that clarity. The communication becomes almost mathematical: cue, response, feedback. But at the same time it is deeply emotional and alive. (and of course, complicated. Humans can never be as precise as a dog)

So in a strange way my dog, my puppets, and my black and white drawings all belong to the same universe.

They are systems that simplify the noise of the world.

They reduce things to contrast, movement, presence, and relationship.

And maybe that is what my brain has been trying to build all along: a quieter place where the important signals are easier to see.