The Art & Poetry of Mary Coleman

I finished my book! The last two illustrations were completed this morning! Below is an overview of everything I drew in December but you can also see it all in a little bigger format here. In total I have 115 poems and 50 illustrations.

After editing, I imagine there will be less than 115 total poems because not every work is going to make the cut, but I hope to have at least 80 in the book at completion of editing. I’m dividing the book into 6 sections: trauma, poems about my mother, poems about nature, humorous poems, poems about painting and writing, and poems about panic attacks. I have a quote to begin each section of the book.

A year ago I would never have dreamed I could complete a book because I had yet to write poetry (that started happening in February 2025). I didn’t have any direction in my life, I was sort of floundering, wondering the point of everything. Poetry has given me purpose and meaning. My visual art over the past few months has been an extension of my poetry, so it also gave my visual art a purpose.

A year ago I also would never have thought I could create visual art without anxiety and perfectionism. It took a lot of work over the past year to re-wire my brain so I enjoyed doing painting again. It’s been a long process of exposure therapy; doing art even when it made me incredibly anxious and just repeatedly doing it day after day until that connection between art and anxiety broke. I spent a lot of time working on repeating affirmations during meditation that targeted perfectionism as well. I also developed a kinder inner critic through CBT which removed the negative self talk I had when it came to art.