Andrea Ballance is a survivor of the Buddhist group NKT and tells ASLI “I have lived through PTSD and RT (religious trauma). I feel that I have something to say that can help people. I feel art in all its facets has an important role to play in an individual’s health and the health of our whole society”.

Andrea Ballance, 41 from Lancing, England is a multimedia community artist who submitted for our first campaign “Celebration of Women”, as a team we felt keeping Andrea’s work for the following campaign would give her a better platform as her piece speaks about the effects of post traumatic stress disorder and being a survivor. This is why we felt her story was better suited for the present campaign “mental illness, health and recovery”.

Andrea is a wife and Mother of two children and has lived all over England as well as mainland Europe and describes herself at present as a: “stay at home mum with 1001 projects bursting from every thought”.

I feel my true artistic background is a lifetime of being obsessed with light and dark. This then turned into an obsession with colour tones and led to me doing a degree in Community Art.

Initially my work was…