About Bariane

This is just an honest but brief self-evaluation, so that anyone passing by, if they want to, can know who I am. I was born in 1969, in the city of Liverpool in the UK; I grew up during the decimation of industry and identity that the city underwent. However at home, although my family was poor and dysfunctional, there was a wealth of creativity and beauty and I became trapped between two worlds: one being a world of social violence, prejudice and ignorance outside my home that I felt I had to survive and understand in order to fit in, and the other a place of magic where my paganistic values flourished but also this too, was a world of confusion. Out of frustration I threw myself into exploring the turmoil of both sides of this dichotomy at an early age; the internal confusion of this situation manifested itself through sport; gymnastics, athletics, swimming, dance, ice skating and martial arts which gave me an outlet to express an energy I felt was suppressed.

At 15 a relative came to visit from New Zealand bringing with him books and the concepts of meditation, hypnosis and holistics, well being and higher thought. It was the beginning of a life long journey for me, a battle into myself and a move away from all that I felt was negative. When my Uncle returned to New Zealand, I walked out of school without taking any O'levels and left home in search of a different way of living, it failed and when the harsh reality of this situation proved too much, I found myself returning to Liverpool filled with a sense of being worthless due to my failure to survive independently. The following year, my mother became seriously ill but I attended college for a brief time in order to try and take the exams I had walked out on at school and found I still had the same inability to accept my surroundings. Again, I did not complete all of my studies.

During this period, I met met my first husband and gave birth to my daughter; the intimacy of being pregnant and giving life to another human being was a profoundly life changing experience. I delighted in my daughter but did not like being a parent or married in general society. I began struggling with depression (a story for another day :)) and also found exposure to the art and music of my brother and his friends which encouraged me to explore my own creative abilities culminating in an involvement as a writer, actress, associate producer and director, in 1993, with 'The Mr Peanut Theatre Company' at 'The Unity Theatre' in Liverpool. This experience inspired me to return to education in 1994, studying at Liverpool John Moore's University, taking up 'Life, Literature and thought', 'Theatre Studies' and 'Imaginative writing' at degree level. Although this time I did complete my studies, I found the teaching to be too fixed, literary and closed in terms of the, staff, fellow students and the school itself being of strict, literary thought rather than offering real freedom of expression and exploration which I was finding in the art department. However, I began to draw, took up playing guitar and learned to play the Bodhran. These outlets could not be combined with my studies which just deepened my frustrations in life.

After a year of university, I became deeply negative about the experience of studying and felt the literary world only allowed me to be a writer in the standard forms of the written word (books and poems) and this was not enough. Having access to the arts department via my brother, I could not help going back and forth between the department for art and media and my own department of humanities. Here, I felt that theatre and literature belonged more with the subject of art than humanities, but this was against the prevailing academic precedent. Outside of my studies I began to investigate the genres of multi-disciplinary arts: concrete poetry, sound art, performance art, instillation and interactive arts. Here, yet again, I found frustration as I had no skills, confidence or outlet to produce what I desired to express. Instead, I became involved with community arts where I hoped to promote the concept that all arts were connected and that all people should have the right to express and explore themselves creatively.

It was not long, however, before I realised I could never have what I was searching for in academia or in general the life I was living. After ending my marriage and becoming a single parent, I found it increasingly difficult to realise what I wanted at all and once my degree was finally over, I truly felt I had wasted my time, youth and not achieved anything; Over the next ten years, I moved, re-married and travelled. In New Zealand I set up a company, 'WIP' (The World is Poetry) to unite artists and provide them with space to display and share their work. The company received council funding from Wellington but my daughter and I did not qualify for residency and so had to leave the country. The company ran for one more year after we departed via some friends but then was closed. After New Zealand, my depression increased, I became despondent, began to drink heavily and generally shrank in the face of who I was or was not and the world my daughter lived in. In the coming years I found myself returning to former thoughts of paganism, Buddhist philosophies and the creative spirit itself, and so began a new, personal journey which continues up to the present day.

I am an artist when I feel like it, a poet upon moments and songwriter when the space is right and I have been living in the small town of Hainburg in Austria for the last three years but have returned to the Uk to live in Devon. I don't know what tomorrow will be, the world turns round with or without us. This is just my small corner of life and my journey. We all have at least the right to that :)