About The Artist

Artist Statement

Why does everything exist as a cycle? This question is exceedingly persistent in a brain with the Tourette Triad: Tourette Syndrome, OCD, and ADHD. Every intrusive thought is followed by compulsion. Each moment of still is followed by the undeniable urge to tic. Reality is perceived through repetition. Each day there are mental and physical rituals to be completed. It feels unnatural, yet Mother Earth is guilty of this herself. Does she not spin on the same axis each day? Does she not rotate the sun each year? Our environment instills in us the concept that the experience of life can be tracked in cycles. We exist in the same twenty-four hours in a never ending loop. This obsessive loop, these tics, these compulsions all create movement. Movement we are trapped in. Occasionally, something breaks this illusion. People call this change.

“Change is the only constant”, but what is change? To change is to alter something. However, is this not synonymous with movement? Down to the atom, there is no physical pause in the objects that surround us. Our beings, our thoughts, and our lives are in a state of motion that never stops. Even in death, the atoms that make up our bodies do not halt. Although the illusion of stillness can be perceived, it can never truly be achieved. If we must question that this sense of stillness is an illusion, how are we to trust that our eyes have the capability of revealing to us the true state and idea of movement?

There is no doubt this perception of movement differs from mind to mind. No brain is the exact same. In my art, I present the way I perceive movement through the Tourette Triad. This triad causes tunnel vision and my surroundings blur together. The fragmentation of the human face through the use of individually realistic facial features in oil paint is used to demonstrate confusion derived from the inability to digest my surroundings as they occur, and rather needing time to process movement, the “change” in our environment. These pauses in perception in my paintings are caused by unpredictable lines that break up the typical pattern of the human face. Oil paint is used in my work to grant the experience of viewing a realistic face with the inability of fully making sense of the face as a whole due to the overwhelming nature of repetition, which on canvas creates a visual vibration that mimics physical movement. The fact that nothing ever truly stands still resonates on my face; Tourette Syndrome makes it physically impossible to resist movement. The repetition of facial features in my paintings not only resembles the overwhelming nature of perceiving movement through an obsessive mind, but it also symbolizes the routine tics, involuntary movements, I cannot refrain from.

While painting, I allow each fragment to wait in anticipation of existence until at least one fragment that shall be directly in contact with it already exists. This replicates the instinctiveness and predictability of movement. Movement’s nature of direct causation exists on my canvases as it does in the natural world. Movement is ever-changing; the constant in all of our lives.

Autumn Meyer

Biography

Autumn Meyer is a twenty-three year old award winning oil painter based in the Saint Louis Metro East. She recently graduated summa cum laude from Southern Illinois University Carbondale with a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a major in Art and a specialization in Painting, a Bachelor of Arts with a major in Languages, Cultures, and International Studies and a specialization in Spanish, a minor in Art History, and a minor in American Sign Language. Her art focuses around her experience of living with Tourette Syndrome, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder.

Press

Three Artists Share SIU Carbondale’s 2026 Rickert-Ziebold Award

Exhibitions

2026

Rickert- Ziebold Trust Award, Winner, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Carbondale, IL, April

2025 

 “Purchase Awards”, Best of show, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Carbondale, IL, March

“Sideshow”, juried, Art Saint Louis, St. Louis, MO, March (Regional)

“Metamorphosis”, juried, Soulard Art Gallery, St. Louis , MO, January (Regional)

2023    

 “Student Art Show”, Best of Show, Southern Illinois University Student Center, Carbondale, IL, November

             “The Art of Darkness” Award of Merit, Soulard Art Gallery, St. Louis, MO (Regional) October

              “Open Studios and Gallery Show”, Surplus Gallery, Carbondale, IL September

2022

“Cabin Fever”, Edwardsville Arts Center, Edwardsville, IL (Regional). March

“Pop! Goes the Easel”, Soulard Art Gallery, St. Louis, MO (Regional)  February

“Anything Goes”, Soulard Art Gallery, St. Louis, MO (Regional) January