“Taking Up Space:” Illustrator Hayley Wall on Neurodivergence and the Power of Art
“If you can tune into your voice and communicate your story, that’s when you’re going to create something nobody’s ever seen before.”
Credit: Hayley Wall, illustrator
Art is Hayley Wall’s love language. Since Wall was a young child, she has found her footing as a communicator through drawing. Wall struggled academically as a child due to dyslexia and undiagnosed ADHD and autism, but she says, “What I did have was this gift where I could create images and I could tell stories.”
When Wall graduated from university and considered where to take her art, she was drawn to the topic of disability. “I was exploring the things I felt were important, the things that needed to be spoken about,” Wall explains. “My mom is disabled, so that’s been around me for a long, long time and it’s felt like people with disabilities are always the last to be thought of.”
Wall was asked to illustrate an article on chronic illness for the cover of Sick magazine, and then another on the same topic for It’s Nice That. These illustrations caught the attention of The New York Times, which commissioned Wall to illustrate a package celebrating the anniversary of The Americans with Disabilities Act. Her work became known for her signature bodies — large, gender-fluid forms, typically without faces, that exude strength, joy, and confidence.
As Wall’s art career gained momentum, so too did her personal journey to understand her own neurodivergence. Though Wall struggled with mental health challenges all her life, it wasn’t until she was 34 that she received a diagnosis of ADHD and autism.
Below, Wall shares her creative process, the challenges and joys of being a neurodivergent artist, and her commitment to a future that celebrates different minds and bodies.
[Read: “Happily Neurodivergent — at Last”]
Q: How did your diagnoses come about?
I’ve always wondered, ‘What’s wrong with me?’ and always struggled with my mental health. It was a feeling of being too much — too emotional, too sensitive, I always carried this feeling of, I just don’t fit in.
When I was 30, I sat down with my partner at the time, and was like, ‘I found this article about adults that have been diagnosed with ADHD and I’ve just done multiple quizzes. Can you do the quiz as well, please?’ They did, and they scored really low. I was like, ‘So you don’t do that? And that?’ It made me think, ‘OK, I think something’s going on.’ I approached my general practitioner, and from there, it took four years to get a diagnosis.
When I was 36, a year ago, I got diagnosed with autism and a mental health condition. I’m coming to terms with all these diagnoses and trying to understand how to navigate them. To me, what’s more important is not the label but just working out what I need.
Credit: Hayley Wall, illustrator
[Self-Test: Autism Test for Adults – Signs of ASD]
Q: When did your love of art begin?
I was a kid who bounced off the walls, I had so much energy. I wouldn’t shut up, and I would cry and scream. To calm me down, my parents would give me pens and paper and I would draw. It was the one time I was calm and focused.
Q: How does your ADHD inform your work?
After graduating, it took me 8 to 10 years to establish myself. I’ve done so many random jobs. I’ve worked as a nanny, in factories, in cafes. But running parallel to that was my hyperfocus, which kept me on track to pursue art. My hyperfocus is the reason I’ve been able to turn art into a career.
My work is all about bodies, usually gender ambiguous bodies. They are these big bodies that take up space — maybe because I’ve always felt really small and inferior. The bodies in my work are powerful. I can live through them.
The whole ‘taking up space’ idea is a big f&*k you to society for being like, ‘You have to be like this, or like that.’ It’s, ‘No, we can be whomever we want to be.’
Q: Can you tell us about your creative process?
A commission will come through and it’s like jumping on a roller coaster. There’s a voice that goes, ‘Here we go.’
I center myself and breathe to remove any negative voices and let the process take me.
As I read the commission, the visuals start coming, and my brain is joining dot-to-dots. I have a background in dance, and the dancing lives in my work now. Sometimes I’ll get myself or my friends into different positions and I’ll draw from that. I create loose, playful hand-rendered drawings and textures, and then I bring it onto my computer to work with.
Once I’ve got my concept down, I enter the most playful part of the process. I can enjoy coming to the end of the roller coaster nice and slowly.
Q: What’s the hardest part of your job?
The first bit of the process, mind-mapping concepts, is hard because I’ve got so many ideas, and I need to hone in. It’s the organization of thoughts that’s hard.
What crushes mind-mapping is impostor syndrome, a feeling I’ve carried of being inferior. I wish I was able to remove that saboteur voice that creeps in to say, ‘You’re not good enough,’ so I could just let my brain run free.
Q: What ADHD supports have you found helpful?
Freelance work is definitely hard because you don’t have HR, you don’t have colleagues to turn to. You are your absolute everything, and it’s really tough.
I was doing it for a long time all by myself, and I reached burnout. My mental health crashed.
In the UK, we are very lucky in terms of the benefits we get from the government. The ‘Access to Work’ program offers a sort of grant or reimbursement scheme to cover the cost of a support worker. It has been very helpful to me, and I’ve used that to have somebody support me through the admin tasks.
I never want to go back to a point where I’m trying to manage it all alone.
Q: Any advice for other artists with ADHD?
If you can tune into your voice and communicate your story, that’s when you’re going to create something nobody’s ever seen before.
Q: Where are you now on your journey of understanding your neurodivergence?
With the community I’ve found, I have a feeling of being able to unmask, to be my true self, to be able to be too much, weird, overly emotional, and sensitive.
Recently, I did a commission for a London museum and library called The Wellcome Collection. They asked me to respond to an article written by a person who was diagnosed with autism as an adult, and because this piece was so personal to my experience, I really wanted to place myself in the work. It was a three-part series: before, during and after diagnosis.
For the final image, I Photoshopped my face in quite a warped way onto the figure. I’ve hid behind my work for years, so to put my own face on this figure felt quite important. It was like, ‘I’m unmasking now. I’m showing myself. I’m allowing myself to actually come through. This is me.’
ADHD, Art, and Mental Health: Next Steps
- Read: Stifled Creativity and Its Damaging Impact on the ADHD Brain
- Read: Why ADHD Masking Is a Form of Self-Sabotage
- Read: “I’m Not Hiding My ADHD Anymore”
SUPPORT ADDITUDE
Thank you for reading ADDitude. To support our mission of providing ADHD education and support, please consider subscribing. Your readership and support help make our content and outreach possible. Thank you.
