Looking Glass

Title: Looking Glass, Artist: Bernice Troskie, 2025. Oil Paint on Stretched Canvas, 50cm x 50cm

Part of the Mad Hatter Exhibition running during the month of September 2025 at the JVH Art gallery.

Temporal Lobe Epilepsy is often referred to as Allice in Wonderland Syndrome, because the author apparently suffered symptoms of the neurological disorder as described in the experiences Alice goes through. After falling down a rabbit hole, in the pursuit of an anomaly that is a rabbit with a waist coat and watch, falling frighteningly fast and then somehow floating around amongst familiar shards of reality; In my experience of TLE this is very accurate in describing the experience of aura’s and the onset of a seizure. The toying with language and its figurative versus literal meanings, changing in size, getting lost in the woods, feeling hunted, hated and frightened. Being confused yet entertained by the shifting realities in one’s own mind; Knowing that some-one else had been there, had experienced these things; helped to reassure me, and guide me through the madness. The books of Alice were to me a mirror and a map, and I will forever be grateful to Charles Lutwidge Dodgson or Lewis Carrol, a man who saw the creative side of reality as equally important to it’s structure. Thank you Sir.