Gillian Lever

House and Garden

Last month some of my paintings were featured on the ‘House and Garden’website in an article about a scheme by interior designer Sarah Walter Boyd. Sarah was trained at Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler, working for ten years under Wendy Nicholls, John Burns and more recently Philip Hooper (Managing Director at Sibyl Colefax and John Fowler). She has gone on to found a company of her own - Sarah Walter Boyd Ltd. 

Sarah chose several of my paintings for her ex-local authority flat in Stockwell, south London. Feeling that the work would sit well in the modernist space. She bought some of the paintings at auction, then tracked me down and commissioned another! It was lovely to work together on the commission.

If you would like to have a conversation about commissioning
a painting please contact me.

Different Strokes Art Workshops

Last month Lever Arts was delighted to work with members of the Different Strokes Birmingham group, to offer a ‘Creativity and Wellbeing’ session at the ‘Living Beyond Stroke: Community and Connection” conference at Irwin Mitchell in Birmingham. The event was designed to bring stroke survivors and their loved ones together to share stories, gain insights, and build lasting connections. 

Ingrid Ash, the Different Strokes Birmingham support group founder, was a keynote speaker at the event. Ingrid’s life changed dramatically in 2007, when pregnant with her second daughter, she suffered a multi-focal stroke. In addition to founding Different Strokes Birmingham Ingrid also serves on the Stroke Engagement Group at her local hospital and educates healthcare professionals on stroke patient challenges.

Different Strokes is a registered charity providing a unique, free service to younger stroke survivors throughout the United Kingdom. It is run by stroke survivors for stroke survivors, for active self help and mutual support.

‘Creative therapy is both hugely neglected and potentially massively beneficial. After a stroke a person’s sense of self-worth is immediately at risk and people find vulnerabilities in themselves that they had not previously known. The psychological and emotional fall out from an event like this is immense. Creative therapy therefore has a role in enabling re-orientation of an individual with a form of expression that doesn’t depend on verbal eloquence. It also has immense potential for stimulating neuronal plasticity and neural re-programming.’
 
 Dr SG Sturman - Consultant Neurologist