“Hope comes from working to overcome your problems, so they no longer have a detrimental effect on your life. The first step is in identifying what’s going on — which is where I think First Art Kit can help.”

— Boo Paterson

Over the past year of uncertainty, many of us have been searching for that something that works for us. We’ve had to go looking for that thing that can ground us. We’ve had to develop new strategies to contend with our anxieties and our struggles. For many of us, what we’ve found to help ourselves is Creativity.

As our world shifts and shifts again, watercolor sets have been opened, easels purchased, and sketchpads taken on daily walks. Some of us have picked up a pencil for the first time, some have returned to a lost passion long abandoned in school art class. A few have even managed to nurture a hobby into a profession.

Creativity has now staked its place firmly within the realm of mental health. We’re becoming accustomed to it being something to reach for when we’re lost, lonely or anxious. For journalist, illustrator and book sculptor Boo Paterson art has long been a cure for her soul and with her soon-to-be-released book First Art Kit we all get to benefit from her learnings.

In this book of modern creative remedies, Boo brings together common emotional and psychological ailments, from anxiety to insomnia, with paper crafting projects that have helped her navigate her life and that might help each of us in our own. With each paper trace and fold, each twist and tear, Boo takes us step by step through possible antidotes, with projects that get us into a state of flow, signpost changes in our own behaviour and give hope for whatever our situation might be.

Recently awarded the prestigious American Illustration Awards 2021, we caught up with Boo to talk about how therapy and paper crafting can come together, why using our hands can help our brains, and how sometimes peace can be found in a paper Gramophone sitting on our bedstand.

In First Art Kit, you pull together a few strands that we’re often used to seeing separately, the craft of paper-cutting, the practice of therapy, your own story and mental wellness more widely. How did you come to bring them together in this way?

I had a traumatic upbringing and consequently suffer from severe depression. A few years ago, I was going through another black-dog episode and began to think ‘you’ve had loads of therapy — why don’t you make a first aid kit for your brain from the advice you’ve had?’

Then I thought I could make things out of paper that were connected to each psychological cure as reminders for me to do the work because therapy *is* hard work!

I’ve been making things out of paper since I was a very young child and this later became what I was known for as an adult. It’s my go-to material for expressing myself. I knew almost instantly that the idea would make a cool book that could potentially help other people, and this spark of ingenuity actually lifted me out of the depression. I came up with the title and the design within the first 5 minutes: I wanted it to look like a vintage first aid kit.

The crafts in First Art Kit aren’t just papercutting, they’re all different types of paper creations; collage, book sculpture, construction, and colouring. I chose paper because it’s easily accessible to all, inexpensive, and recyclable. Also, paper is unintimidating; many people who think of themselves as ‘bad at art’ are put off by paints and other media, feeling that they have no skills and that they’ll somehow embarrass themselves. But people handle paper every day. It’s seen as something that everyone can use.

I love how the book normalises everyday life — the moments we feel we have low self-esteem, or experience anger, or struggle with family members for instance. It universalises our emotional and mental wellbeing. How did you choose the 25 ailments covered in the book? What’s the balance between what you’ve experienced in your own life and how you understand the experiences of others?

I’ve had 23 years of different types of therapy — and every type I’ve tried has benefited me in some way. The last treatment I had was Schema Therapy plus EMDR for trauma, which I have found to be the most useful of all, as it rewires your brain so you no longer default to problem coping strategies. It does seem to have cured my depression and PTSD.

Each chapter tackles a different problem, such as insomnia or anxiety, for example. I’d say I’ve personally dealt with about 18 of the 25 problems and I started writing about those first because, remember, the book was initially created to cure me!

I then began to think of friends’ struggles — such as hoarding or eating disorders — which I’ve never had, but have been on the periphery of. So that’s what I researched next.

The crafts themselves are therapeutic, allowing people to get into a ‘flow state’ of deep concentration. It’s a state that children are frequently in through play, but that adults hardly ever experience. It’s incredibly relaxing and allows the chatter of your brain to be switched off. Making things with your hands also gives people a sense of mastery, which is very important for self-esteem.

As my shrinks never tired of telling me, it’s normal to have a range of emotions. No one is happy all the time, and it wouldn’t be ideal if you were. For those who don’t have problematic behaviours, there is still something here for you — if you’re on a downer, you can read the advice, and relax by doing the crafts.

For those rare people with no problems at all, it can just be used as a craft book!

What’s your hope when someone picks up this book?

I hope that people who’ve never been to therapy and who have little experience of psychology can get a little insight into what the real reason for their unhappiness might be and that it leads them on a journey to find out more and even seek treatment. I also hope that people can get some light relief from doing the crafts, relaxing into the flow state, picking up new skills and learning to incorporate these into their daily life.

I like how some of the projects feel like talismen almost, as reminders of some learning, others as meditative exercises, and others as ways of processing something. Some of them are funny and whimsical, others heartbreaking, or heady/conceptual. How did you connect the ailments to the projects; what purpose are you hoping they’ll serve and did that shift as you developed this book?

I wanted them to be beautiful — that’s always a given for me. And I wanted them to be linked in some way to the psychological work that people would have to do. You have to practise therapeutic cures repeatedly to make them stick. I thought if they were unusual, in whatever manner, then that would make users have a connection with the objects.

I guess the reason they came out as they did — with this range of emotions associated with them — is just how my brain works. I reckoned that if I wanted a mini-gramophone made out of paper on my mantlepiece, then probably other people would too!

You mention your own experience with therapy in the preface and you’ve mentioned elsewhere that you’ve been in therapy for 23 years. I’m curious about your relationship with therapy now. This book feels very open to the practice and brings in advice from your own sessions, so you seem therapy-curious still?

My Schema Therapy and EMDR finished in January and its effect on me has been amazing, so I don’t actually need therapy anymore. I exhibit completely different behaviours now.

My parents were alcoholics, so were emotionally absent, and I couldn’t rely on them to meet my needs. As is typical of children who never had their needs met, I continued to put myself in situations where they would not be met as an adult, because that is what is comfortable.

I was face-palming myself all during Schema Therapy, at each realisation that I was inflicting these cruelties on myself.

A good example is this: I have Raynaud’s Syndrome, so I’m always cold unless it’s about 25 degrees. But I wouldn’t switch the heating on unless it was below about 5 degrees. I would sit in the house in my coat — or sometimes two coats — and a hat and scarf, saying it was because I couldn’t afford the heating.

But keeping myself poor was also one of my problem behaviours. I felt I didn’t deserve to have financial security or warmth, or enough food; just the bare minimum, as I’d grown up with emotional deprivation.

As I was undergoing the Schema Therapy, I suddenly noticed that I was starting to turn the heating on as soon as I felt even slightly cold — it made me laugh, actually, as it was so unusual. It became automatic and over-rode the original problem behaviour. So much so that I started meeting my needs all over the place! Now I not only turn the heating on, but buy nice food, and treat myself as I treat others.

Why do you think so many people are now turning to creativity as a tool to think about and manage their relationship with themselves and their lives?

Well, it’s completely enjoyable for a start. But there are also numerous studies showing how it alleviates anxiety, depression and stress. I mean, art therapy isn’t a highly skilled profession for nothing.

How do you hope First Art Kit might help in our current moment, of increased loneliness and disconnection, and our collective need to heal from the past year (and keep hopeful in the coming months)?

I think that there’s an element of kismet in First Art Kit coming out at a time of worldwide collective trauma. Many people — who could distract themselves in normal times — were left for the first time to have a good hard look that their problems and their personal situations. People realised what they did and didn’t need. Emotional needs were actually talked about in public discourse, which rarely happened before.

People who have considered the subject of mental health to be embarrassing or un-macho are now verbalising their problems.

Hope comes from working to overcome your problems, so they no longer have a detrimental effect on your life. The first step is in identifying what’s going on — which is where I think First Art Kit can help. Most people have no idea why they act the way they do.

Could you tell me a little about the process of making this book over the 6 months of the first lockdown? I was sorry to learn that you lost loved ones.

I had started writing the words in December 2019 and started conceptualizing and creating the crafts by February 2020. My aunty died around the time of the first lockdown in March, my mum in May, my uncle in August, my friend of 30 years in October and another great friend the day after my birthday in January 2021.

It was like a grenade going off in my face every couple of months. I have actually had a year like this before though: I lost six loved ones in seven months in 2016. So that experience helped somewhat, in that I knew it was normal to feel absolutely abnormal most of the time. I knew that it would take years to process, because — for me anyway — after 3 deaths you don’t have the capacity to grieve for any more people. You kind of put them on a mental back-burner and the grief for them hits you later — sometimes years later.

As for doing the book at the same time, well this is where a dysfunctional childhood really comes into its own! If it doesn’t completely break you, it makes you highly resilient; to the extent where you can cope with almost any trauma and also hold down a full-time job. You’re so used to having no one to rely on that you just get on with it. So I did.

You’ve long used art as an escape. What did that look like for you as a child and how did it help you?

Well, the ‘artist as a tortured soul’ isn’t a cliche for nothing. In childhood, as in adulthood, art allows you to funnel emotional pain out of you and onto a page, where you can process it. Sometimes it’s beautiful, sometimes it’s ugly, but it’s always meaningful.

Personally, I like to create beauty out of suffering, then I feel I’ve converted pain into something worthwhile that others can enjoy.

What drew you to paper cutting in particular as a child and why does it continue to be something that you do in your life?

One of my earliest memories was watching an episode of Me and You with my mum — I was probably 3 or 4. They showed you how to make a birdcage out of paper and so I followed along and was amazed that I could make something flat into something 3D.

I also had a ‘play box’, which was a big cardboard box filled with Fairy bottles, loo-roll tubes, and scrap paper; I think we’d now call it ‘the recycling’, but we made our own fun in the 70s. Luckily, there was a plentiful supply of scrap paper as my dad was an author, as well as being a fireman, so all his manuscript pages that didn’t make the cut went into the play box.

I suppose if there had been oil paints and canvas lying around, I would have been into that.

You’ve experienced first-hand the surge in popularity of paper cutting? What do you attribute this to?

I suppose I’m partly responsible for this, as I created Papercut This Book to allow people with no artistic experience to get really nice results papercutting using templates. But aside from that, it’s the case of paper being cheap and available to all — so paper cutting is really a democratic art and craft.

Departing from the book, can you tell me a little about your book holiday course and how this came about?

I’m a book sculptor and created a 15-day e-course to let people immerse themselves in the joy of books and related arts and crafts, and like First Art Kit, its main thrust was to improve overall wellbeing.

I came up with the idea when I was incredibly stressed, and a friend told me to take a week off and do nothing but read books. I loved that idea of taking a vacation from life to be creative with books, and so Book Holiday was born. And, of course, I didn’t take a week off to read books — I got stuck in creating the course instead!

Last question, where do you go when you are lost, lonely, anxious or curious?

Books for when I’m lost, lonely or curious; either reading them or making things out of them.

I’ve been doing Transcendental Meditation for several years now, so I no longer experience anxiety.

Boo Paterson is an artist, illustrator, and journalist whose papercuts and book sculptures have been exhibited at the prestigious Royal Scottish Academy and short-listed for the World Illustration Awards twice. She is a regular cultural commentator for the BBC, and extensive coverage of her artwork has appeared in publications across the world, including the Guardian, the Week, and the Sunday Times. Boo divides her time between New York and the UK.

To learn more about Boo, visit her online.

Boo Paterson, First Art Kit: 25 Creative Papercraft Remedies for What Ails You

Published by Simon & Schuster.

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