The Midlife Creative Crisis, with JC Candanedo and Jane Shemilt

Event date: 24 November 2022

Axis Trustee, JC Candanedo and best-selling author, Jane Shemilt, reflect on their experiences of being mid-career creatives and starting their practice later in life.

About JC

JC Candanedo is an artist and Axis Trustee. He started out as an IT Project Manager in Telecommunications. After a career that spanned more than two decades, he became a visual artist at age 40. His work has been longlisted for the National Portrait Gallery’s Taylor Wessing Award, shortlisted for the Royal Photographic Society and recipient of a Silver Award at the AOP Photography Awards. His photos have also been featured on the BBC and The Guardian.

JC is a Queer, Catalan-Panamanian Visual Artist based in London. He uses photography to investigate issues of Identity, Mental Health and Ideology, particularly queer and national identities. He's passionate about using the visual arts to encourage Social Transformation.

Ultimately, his goal is to use his work to help make this a Better World.

About Jane

While working as a GP, Jane Shemilt completed a postgraduate diploma in Creative Writing at Bristol university and went on to study for the MA in Creative Writing at Bath Spa, gaining both with distinction. She was shortlisted for the Janklow and Nesbitt award, the Lucy Cavendish fiction prize and the Edgar Award for Daughter, her first novel.

Daughter was a Richard & Judy pick in 2014 and was the best-selling debut novel published that year. It was translated into 21 languages. Jane is now the author of five published thrillers.

She and her husband Steve, a Professor of Neurosurgery, have 5 children and live in Bristol.


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