The Orange Tree Grove
Mood:  on fire
Topic: art in progress
Just finished. Took pictures this morning. Very difficult to capture the look of the original. This is an oil painting done on paper mounted on board. It measures (I'll have to get back to you).

Painting
Mood:  spacey
Topic: building business
I painted for three hours this morning. There was very little joy. It was simply the work that needed to be done, and I pushed myself. The underpainting is starting to look complex and lush. The multiple thin layers of transparent pigment has given all the objects a weighty, substantial look. Getting hungry with anticipation for the time to come when the underpainting is complete and I can start adding a top coat of color.

Mike said that my slow creative process is unusual. This whole process of preparation shows unusual creative restraint, and many amateur artists he has met don't have it. Creativity pushes some people with a rush of energy, and they move boldly froward with paint, canvass and brush. I tried that method once, and only once, and the canvass quickly was put out on the curb with the garbage.

Yesterday I found an interview with Aaron Holliday, the schizophrenic painter I admire who painted "Baby Fish". I felt sad for Holliday because he took the same gamble that I am taking, trying to stand on his own two feet an make money as an artist. It backfired when he lost his social security income. Now he has no medical care for the schizophrenia and that is a very dangerous position to be in. The disease can be progressive, with psychosis worsening and brain damage resulting in an even lower level of artistic productivity. Un-medicated it is possible that he could lose that ability to make art for several years or even, forever. Somebody has to talk straight to Holliday about the severity of his illness and what he needs to do to defend his gift and his sanity. Somebody needs to say things that would break his heart, I bet that none of his caretakers has the guts to do it.

Holliday's story illustrates what Mike and I call "The Myth of Recovery", where patients get subtle (and not so subtle) signals from society that full-time employment is possible, and levels of higher functioning can be attained through either education or willpower. In my recovery it is true that after many years (10 to 15) I can now write better and make more sophisticated art. But what has not changed is the hours during the day that I am sick. The proportion of low functioning hours of illness compared to high functioning hours of health has not changed.

It is my favorite daydream that I am magically granted the gift of eight working hours per day. I can paint non-stop for that amount of time, and oh, what wonders I would produce! My skill would leap forward as I learn from accident and experimentation. And at the end of a year I could stand in the middle of a room in a gallery and see my most recent work covering every wall.

In terms of recovery from schizophrenia it is true that over the years I have become more skilled. After the disastrous onset of the illness and global loss of cognitive ability, I am now more skilled at social interaction, at writing, at using art materials and at using a computer. But note what my education and advancement has cost me - I could not work any type of standard job while I was building up this narrow range of skill. There was a choice I had to make about 15 years, a fork in the road with two directions. First, I could work a part-time job, about 15 hours a week. The job would earn me extra money but I would have no energy left over for creative work. My friend Rocki went this route, first as a part-time student and then as a part-time worker in a library re-shelving books. She is a creative person who enjoys writing songs and short stories, and while she has talent, she had little time left after work in which to practice. Understand that since Rocki has a disease like my own, a lot of her time is spent, like me, simply being ill and withdrawn.

The alternative route was to discipline myself and write and make art as a self-taught, self-motivated agent. It was a terribly lonely route. There was no promise of either publication or if the artwork would sell. Very few people were interested in my progress. And while I was on disability it was in my best interest to work steadily in private and accrue skill, looking forward to the one day when I might, only might, burst forward upon the art world fully formed, like Athena from Zues's skull.

I wonder what Roger Ricco would say about my art?

And should I approach NARSAD with an artwork, and try to get some publicity through their agency? The only trouble is that NARSAD is political and they like really "upbeat" images to represent mentally ill persons, like pretty flowers and landscapes. Oh, and they don't like the work to look too childlike or primitive either. Better to show how "sophisticated" at using "artistic technique" the mentally ill person can be.

I went to the Ricco/Maresca gallery to grab a picture of Holliday's work. Well, the website was updated and Maresca no longer has Holliday listed as an artist client. The interview below took place three years ago. So I guess he didn't sell. There is just one schizophrenic client left, Ken Grimes. I was really happy to see new pictures of Grimes work. I don't know if my work is as strong as Grimes. Good, Better, Best. The world is judging you. You have the choice to listen or not.

Poor Aaron Holliday.


The Art of Aaron Holliday

The artwork of Aaron Holliday can range from the surreal to the startlingly realistic. His pencil drawings are lush and intricately detailed; and his oil paintings employ the same attention to detail combined with a riot of color and depth.

By the time he was 13, Aaron Holliday had turned to drawing to alleviate his loneliness. Born in New York and raised in Los Angeles by his grandmother, he gradually withdrew from the world.

Eventually, he became so focused on drawing that he refused to go to school and had to be hospitalized. Mr. Holliday spent 3 years at Los Angeles County Hospital. Now 54, he currently resides in an assisted living facility.

Completely self-taught, Mr. Holliday works closely with the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression Artworks (NARSAD) to display and sell his artwork to the public.

The Ricco/Maresca Gallery in New York found out about Mr. Holliday through NARSAD and now has several of his pieces on display.

NARSAD Artworks showcases the talents of many gifted artists who happen to be mentally ill in an effort to help raise their self-esteem, as well as their income.

In addition to original artwork, pieces are available in the form of gift cards, calendars, lithographs, and postcards.

The group also raises money for projects that advocate on behalf of the mentally ill, and it promotes public education to destigmatize mental illness.

According to Roger Ricco of the Ricco/Maresca Gallery, Mr. Holliday's "work is extremely realistic, in contrast to primitive or brut art. He has this amazing skill to paint his ideas or draw his ideas. His paintings are surreal, but they also are very real in a way." "Birds on Scarf" has a translucence that helps give the painting a multidimensional feel.

Mr. Holliday's work brings together diverse sources and interests. "Ultimately, when [these interests] become a picture, they're almost perfectly real and at the same time; there's almost something wrong with it, in the sense of something is not normal, and I don't mean in a medical sense, but in terms of reality. What you end up with is a picture that looks like a room, and then you realize that everything about it is strange, but beautifully and wonderfully rendered," Mr. Ricco said.

"You might see a reflection in a mirror that you wouldn't expect to see, or the reflection goes back five times. From the art angle, his work stands on its own."

Many of Mr. Holliday's pencil drawings feature an eagle and a Native American character. In one, the eagle is soaring above mountains and a stream, with the full span of the bird's wing illustrated. In another, "Yellow Hawk", the bird is perched atop the outstretched arm of the Native American man with a forest backdrop The man is wearing long braids and a feather. Like all of Mr. Holliday's other works, these are finely detailed.

In some of his more surreal works, a huge eagle stands on the ground next to the Native American man, and they are almost the same in height.

And in yet another, two chubby-cheek infants are framed against a backdrop of lush flowers. The work is titled "Babyfish" because instead of legs, the lower bodies of the infants are fish tails that appear to be submerged in clear water.

Mr. Rocco is particularly impressed with the quality of Mr. Holliday's paintings. "They are very elegant and probably historically accurate," he said.

Mr. Holliday's work can be viewed online at www.riccomaresca.com . He lives in Southern California.

The Artist's Reflections
There's no inspiration behind my work. A picture comes to mind, and there it is.

The length of time it takes to create depends on the piece. Each drawing takes about a month. A painting takes maybe a month and a half. It's really nothing shattering or scientific. It's just a thought I have in my mind.

Well, I'm not dead yet, but I want to say I've been painting all of my life. But I was drawing like this since I was a kid.

I've never been to a gallery. Ricco/Maresca Gallery is the first I've ever known. I've never even been there. It's the first gallery that's shown my work.

The drawings are simply pictures I put on canvas or on paper. It's a thought. I don't have a private collection of work. When I finish a piece, NARSAD takes it, and it goes into their traveling show.

I don't work every day at this. I may not work for months, and then I get the feeling to work. I'm working on a piece right now that I've had for a year. I hadn't worked on it for about 6 months, and I'm getting back at it. I get the feeling to work, and I do until I get tired of doing it. And then I don't want to do it for a while.

I've been diagnosed with schizophrenia, manic depression, I know it's called bipolar now, but this is years ago, back when I was in [Los Angeles] County Hospital when I was a child.

I'm not under a physician's care right now at all. I'm trying to get back on supplemental security income (SSI). I left SSI because I thought I could make a living on my art, but I cannot do it. I'm not doing anything for my medical care right now. I am diabetic and NARSAD helps me with my diabetes care, but as far as having a doctor, no.

My problem is schizophrenia. I hear voices and things like that. Sometimes good voices; sometimes very nice voices; sometimes very angry voices. But I'm not dangerous. I've never hurt anybody; never wished to hurt anybody. I hear the voices every day. Sometimes medication takes the voices away. But I don't want to be on medication.

When I have a clear mind, my work is beautiful, but when my mind is not clear, it's slightly schizophrenic. It's not terrible or ugly, but it's surrealism style.

"Babyfish" is slightly surreal. "Yellow Hawk" is not. The eagle on the Indian's arm, that's a normal position. If the eagle was carrying him, that would be surreal. Babyfish is slightly surreal 'cause babies don't have fish tales, but if you go to an aquarium and you see young fish, you think baby fish. And there are other pieces like that too, especially among my oil paintings. I have a piece called "Rhapsody." It's supposed to be music, and it's a big swirl.

I'm working on "Garden Path" now. It's of a woman in a garden, set in the 15th century, Dutch style. You know the saying "rose-colored glasses," and "going down the garden path," meaning you're not paying attention to your life and you're just about flowers and going down the garden path, and not doing anything with your life, well this was my thought behind the drawing. The woman is holding flowers, and she's in an old country garden. It's beautiful. It's coming in real good. It's a pencil drawing. I've been working on it for a year, more or less.

I really want to try to make a living from my art. I could not get a job doing anything. What kind of job could I have because of my illness?

Art As Therapy
Mood:  not sure
Topic: email questions
Why you think art works as a therapy?

When I was 21 I had been living in a mental institution in Hartford, Connecticut for almost two years. My situation there was grave. I had not been making the anticipated recovery that staff had predicted when I was first admitted. At that time they put me to live on a ward where the average stay was six months. Now they were reconsidering moving me to a long term unit with the prognosis that I would need to live there for a year or two more.

When they told me their plan I begged them for one more chance to make enough of a recovery that I be discharged to a half-way house. The hospital's criteria for wellness was that I cease being continuously suicidal and that I obtain and keep a part-time job outside of the Institute walls. Perhaps, then, an angel came to look over me for I was able to obtain a job at a prestigious world class museum in downtown Hartford, The Wadsworth Atheneum. At the interview for a position at the museum information desk, I was frank about my situation. I would walk from the Institute to the Wadsworth and then walk back home where I would be locked again on a psychiatric unit. The woman who would become my boss hired me. At first the job was volunteer, with the possibility of paid employment in the future.

To prepare for my job I would wear my nicest clothing and a pair of heeled shoes. I put on make-up. And then, it seemed, I walked down the street to a castle filled with treasure. The Wadsworth Atheneum is the oldest continuing running art museum in America. The main lobby was built with architecture that resembles a castle. Added on to this original wing was a stately hall filled with nine different type of marble and brass inlay, sweeping marble stairs, and a skylight made from Tiffany glass. It had been funded by the wealthy philanthropist Pierpont Morgan and intended to echo the architecture found in classical European buildings. Over the decades many artistic treasures were donated or bought and eventually a dazzling permanent collection formed. Works on display ranged from ancient Sumerian, Egyptian and Greek statues to paintings by Western Civilization's greatest masters, both old and new. And me, little broken institutionalized me, got to walk through the quiet halls and stand in front of some of the greatest achievements of the human mind and spirit. I looked, and the images filled me, leaving less room for brooding emotions.

The Boss lady who hired me occasionally wore a coat to work that had a pin stuck to the lapel. The pin said, "Art Saves Lives". The Wadsworth certainly saved my life. I would go on to work there with pay for the next four years and become part of the volunteer docent program that gave tours to the general public and to school children.

Understand that I made no art while I worked at the Wadsworth. That would come later. What the Wadsworth did was first fill me with pride. It was a job that I grew into, becoming a more valued employee the more facts I learned about the museum history and art. Second, it got me talking to normal folk and had normal folk talking friendly right back to me. The long hospital stay had been demoralizing, in part because I was always being treated like a case to be studied, a walking illness. While staff were certainly humane they emotionally removed from those under their care. Conversations included no personal information and I was usually addressed by my last name. Talking to other patients was more social, but we were all so sick that the topics we liked to talk about were usually sad and traumatic. I remember hearing stories of incest and rape, the past attempt at suicide by hanging or the slashed wrist, and listening to earnest psychotic rambling about devils and aliens and the nurse who was trying to poison us.

In the hospital there was the portent of violence in the air. A light bulb was smashed and a shard of glass used as a weapon. If a pair of scissors went missing we were all strip searched. If a nurse miscounted or forgot to count her needles we were strip searched. Staff was kicked. Staff took down a patient to be restrained so violently that the young man vomited. People screamed incessantly when they didn't get their way. Several held napkins under their mouths to catch the drool created by excess medication. Men and women would sit, their whole body shaking violently, as the Valium or heroin addiction passed out of their blood. I got beat up by my "boyfriend" because I refused to give him blow jobs in the staircase anymore. It was the only time in my life that I have been violently attacked. Sometimes patients succeeded in killing themselves while they were living on the unit. Sometimes they killed themselves right after they left.

Part of the function of art is to present an alternative reality. People who have lived with mental illness desperately need escape from their illness and I think that art can provide such an escape. It is possible to forget many things while you are making art. It is possible to create a more beautiful world in your art.

And in a simple way, art is honorable. It is a high function of the human mind, and society reacts to it with respect and wonder. Mental illness with the disability and poverty it creates makes one feel socially dishonorable. To say, "I make art" gives a person an identity that is a lot better than "I am sick".

After I started working at the Wadsworth Atheneum I rapidly improved. My emotions lifted. I gained a new, healthy identity. My job was to be one of the many caretakers of priceless artifacts. I got a lot of practice having ordinary conversations with ordinary people. And I spent a lot of time quietly looking at art. Part of the damage that the schizophrenic thought disorder did to my mind was to render me unable for about a year to either read or write. The loss of the ability was quite a shock because shortly before my hospitalization I had been a student on the Dean's List at Barnard College in New York City, rewarded with A grades in Philosophy and Religion and English Literature. But there is no doubt that I suffered a loss of the ability to think in abstract terms. The difficulty reading and writing was an extension of this because language is symbolic and is created through the logic of grammar. Logic, rules, and one thing substituting for an abstract concept were frequently just beyond the reach of my disorganized mind. It has taken many, many years of practice to arrive at the writing skills I have today.

Looking at art involves no language skills. Communication through artwork is visceral, immediate, often unconscious, and concrete. There can be ambiguity in what a picture might mean, but there is no ambiguity about what is presented to the eyes. In my opinion art lights up the more primitive parts of the brain that are least affected by the schizophrenic thought disorder. Cave men left behind pictures. Civilization advanced to language later.

Given a choice between writing and painting or drawing I would chose the artmaking activity. The reason goes back to the onset of schizophrenia and how I believe it changed the functioning of my brain. It is now easier for me to think in a concrete manner than an abstract way. I wouldn't say that "easier" is a precise word. A better way of putting it is that making art is less painful than writing or socializing for extended periods of time. The frequent lack of logic necessary to create a drawing or pick a color is soothing. The brush pushes pigment in wet solution around on a flat surface and the act is very concrete. With a flick of the wrist, what you see is what you get and it is no more complicated than that.

I can make a picture that doesn't make sense, that lacks reason and meaning, and this will not dissuade my audience from looking at it. But if my written words are not put in proper order, if they are not arraigned by an abstract system with reason and meaning and logic - how few people would care to be an audience!

Currently I work at making art. Some of my paintings have taken a very long time to make. There were preparatory photographs, preparatory drawings, an underpainting, a study of contrast and color, and finally with a tiny brush, the building up of transparent layers of color. It is a job like any other and eventually an art collector pays me money for my painting. What I sell is worth every cent and in time, it will be worth more.

In all, I have been hospitalized about eight separate times in the last twenty years. In the last 6 years I have done very well and have not needed any psychiatric hospitalization. In my memory there is a big difference between art therapy done in the hospital and the art that I chose to make on my own.

In the hospital art therapy classes were timed and every stop of the project was clearly defined by the therapist. I built a wooden napkin holder and painted it. I filled a glass tube with colored striations of sand and sealed it. I drew a picture of a dog vomiting and a dog house. It was good therapy for us to get our minds working in an ordered fashion. If you are sick enough to be hospitalized then often the mind is very disorganized and broken down and you need to get it functioning well enough to follow instructions and to work with a purpose or goal in mind. Art tasks can build up the stamina of the mind.

Sometimes a part of therapy was that we symbolize our emotions with pictures - I guess that one day I felt like a dog vomiting. The dog also said in a little cartoon bubble that he was going to bark and then eat his own vomit. Don't know what it meant, but it got my therapist so upset that she canceled my pass off hospital grounds for that weekend.

I also remember the art projects that I did on my own when I was in the hospital. Here is a drawing I made with colored pencils of three performers in a circus. You can get very board while you are locked up. I liked keeping busy. And look at the fun and curious world I got to escape to! I remember where the orange double triange and circle pattern came from. When I was first admitted because I felt suicidal my mind was so fragmented that all I could draw was the repetition of the triange and circle pattern. It made what looked like a row of eyes. I filled sheets of paper from top to bottom with the one pattern. I did this activity because there was no other activity my mind could do at that time.

My particular sickness creates a very uneven flow of consciousness. When consciousness was rigid, constricted, and disorganized a simple repeating pattern was neither boring nor unusual. As my mind recovered I was able to place in this pattern more variation of color, of shape and meaning. As my mind mended I probably began to socialize with the other patients at the same time that I was able to draw a human figure.

One of the benefits of making art is that the artist can work when he or she is ready. I only work when my mind is fresh and clear and lacking psychotic symptoms. This gives me a window of about two hours in the morning, and after rest, two hours in the evening. I experience fluctuations in emotions and consciousness every day. It's a continuous rollarcoaster of ability and disability, cheer and despair.

What has aided me enormously in making art has been the simple availability of a place to go and work. Art can be made at home, but isolation of that type is no good for me, and I prefer having the choice to go out and draw in public. Many times I have made art in community centers called clubhouses where the membership is exclusively mentally ill. Sometimes they served lunch. Sometimes they would bring in an art teacher to give weekly lessons. Twice I arraigned for a large art, professional art show at a clubhouse. Artists had to submit entry forms, all work was framed either by the artist or a volunteer, we had an opening reception party with an outside, professional juror presenting awards, and a price list. Both shows were a monumental task, with months of preparation work done by staff and volunteers alike. It was a great social activity for me and others. It involved a lot of responsibility. But in the end, our pride as a community soared. Many of us were shocked at what the sickest in our midst could accomplish.

The activities surrounding the creation and showing of artwork are therapeutic for persons with a mental illness. The illness is isolating but public displays of art gives a person a sense of connectedness with others. Sometimes the sick person is so fragile that they do poorly at making new acquaintances or talking for very long. Art then become a bridge from the emotional inner world to a person outside it - all without needed to talk, or risk one's personal space being violated by a stranger.

In the end I ask a question that should have been asked at the beginning. What is a definition of therapy? For instance, just last week a woman told me that on some days her job was good therapy for her. Working with other people in need helped her keep her own private troubles in perspective. She felt good about helping people. Her job made her feel valuable.

My art had been the key to my recovery. It has been good for my social life, it has aided in the increased integrity of my mind. Every artwork is a mental challenge and I don't doubt that new pathways of health are being created in my mind when I make art. Recovery from mental illness right now does not mean for me a cure. What it means is that my illness does not get worse. Art does not make me sick. I do get tired. But there is always enormous satisfaction for me when I am mentally fatigued and weak after several hours of work. I know that I extended my self to the maximum, no slacking. And a permanent record of my effort remains, to be worked on once more when consciousness coalesces, acts in a harmonious fashion, and symptoms retreat. This chance to go back to the picture always exists after a good night's sleep. I cannot count the number of times I have gone to bed eager to wake and work the next morning. In those moments I know that I live life to the fullest.

Personal Profile
Mood:  spacey
Topic: email questions
The question to be answered is a simple profile.

What is your age, your job, situation with marriage and children and where do you live?

Last month, January 2006, I turned 38 and got married for the second time. My first marriage lasted four years and was to man who had a mental illness of the same chronic and disabling nature as my own.

The man I am now married to, Michael, is older than me and has a grown daughter from a previous marriage. He has a management job position in manufacturing and no history of mental illness. We have discussed having children but decided that it is too medically difficult for me to have any by natural methods.

Currently I am a volunteer at the Brattleboro Museum of Fine Arts. In the past I have been a museum docent and worked at a museum information desk. I am also enrolled in the River Gallery Art School, a small non-profit organization that provides me with studio space and informal art instruction.

My husband and I moved from Connecticut to Brattleboro, Vermont last summer and so far it has been a difficult transition. We moved because my mother has rental property in Brattleboro that needed management. This property has also provided us with a beautiful, inexpensive apartment to live in.

We have three pets that all love and demand attention. I trained our long haired german shepherd with the help of a man who trains police dogs. We also have two cats who were rescue adoptions.

My Inspiration
Mood:  happy
Topic: email questions
Catherine from England asked me this question;

Where and how you get your inspiration?

I have at home an art library with many books in it. There are books filled with the life and works of a single artist such as Picasso, Goya or Van Gogh. There are books that have paintings and decorative objects from a single collection, from perhaps a museum in Russia or Italy. Some books take a single topic and bring together artists from different countries and centuries. Books devoted to a topic such as portraiture, eroticism, the annunciation, american folk art, medieval art, horses, cats, dogs, and angels or fairy painting. There is a final category of books that I term "source books" because they are used by me to draw in a realistic manor. I literally copy the object from the book and insert it into a scene of my own invention. I have books with photography of animals, photography of nudes, photography of flowers and nature, castles, horses, church architecture, and two books with the original Muybridge studies of movement. Not all source books need be photographic. There are collections of artist drawings that are old enough to be copy-right free, often quaint styles of the 19th and early 20th century. A recent acquisition is a book with 16th century woodcuttings of mythical and real animals as conceptualized at the time.

My favorite way to go to sleep is to look at the pictures in a book. The collections of writings by the British celebrity nun Sister Wendy about her favorite paintings is a favorite bedtime read.

When I start a drawing I start with a blank piece of paper and some small idea. One painting I only knew that I wanted a green sky. No matter how complicated the imagery got afterwords, with purple pansies and strawberries and a dancing girl in a couture Victor & Rolf dress it all started with the need to make a sky in my favorite color of paint, light cobalt green. In a previous painting the start was a photograph of a different Victor & Rolf dress seen in a fashion magazine. One painting started with the architecture in a 14th century religious painting and the desire to make a gold sky, the style during that period. Another drawing began with me wanting to tell the story of a man who had a lobotomy who I met in a psychiatric hospital. Once the topic was my vision of Hell. Then I challenged myself to do an accompanying vision of Paradise. When I was first dating my husband drawings from life of his body was inspiration for the development of a portrait of an archangel. The work I am currently involved with started with the simple idea of a boat on a pond surrounded by an orange tree grove.

I had some trouble in the making of that drawing because my mind gave me images that I had to ignore. I saw (in my mind's eye) that on every tree in the orange grove there was an angel that was hanging dead at the end of a rope. I had to ignore the desire to draw such an image because I know that it would be socially offensive and make the final artwork painful for most people to view. Images of angels doing violent things to one another filled my imagination as well, a drowning, a blow from a fist and a kick to the head.

I have long been familiar with the artwork of Henry Darger which depicts little girls in similar violent situations. The Darger illustration above was located by me on the internet and I have never seen it before. Never did I desire to imitate Darger with my orange tree grove. Currently my Henry Darger book is lent to a friend. All I can say is that I must be as mentally disturbed as that man was. Truthfully, one of the symptoms of my illness is a desire to kill myself or the belief that I ought to be killed. The main difference between Darger and I is that he was an artist working entirely in private, all his art and writing was discovered after death. He was a recluse with no reason for self censorship. But I, being far more connected to family and society, have to temper some artistic impulses. The violence never completely goes away, it rather becomes sublimated into images that can have a multiplicity of interpretation. An example would be the playful throwing of an orange, rather the way a snowball is thrown by children. Except I think that if the throw was hard and fast and if you got hit that would sting and bruise your body quite a bit.

As I mentioned, I often see pictures in my head. It occurs entirely in my imagination and I have never hallucinated. If I want I can change the picture in my head, experiment with a different color or style of dress. Part of the allure of making art is the summoning of these pictures, it is quite comforting, and like having an imaginary playmate, they are good company.

Perhaps I should make a final note about my awareness of the Outsider art and Visionary art movements. These are contemporary terms that could be used to describe my art. Instead of getting into a discussion of why I may qualify for one category or the other, I will admit that my library contains only a few examples of such artwork. Maybe part of the problem is that I get too excited by seeing artwork that is similar to my own. Or maybe I am jealous of reading about artists who are now recognized by the art world while I am not.

There was a time when my library contained books about this type of art. I think I donated those books to a charity during a move from one apartment to another. By reading books and magazines such as "Raw Vision" I became aware that the boundaries of definition of style and talent were more flexible than anything I knew before. I became aware that I am not a freak and that it is acceptable by some to make untutored nonacademic primitive pictures. But I think that artists who are like me do not inspire me because in their work there is no mystery. I like to look at artists who can do things that I cannot. I like looking at artists who make me ask, "How did he do that?" and "What made him want to do that?" Similarity is also dangerous because I don't want to copy, steal a bit maybe, but never ever copy. I like to look at artists who are better than me, and perhaps, because of their healthy minds and academic training and social connections can make art that I will never be capable of making.

The best source of inspiration is often nothingness. In such times of nothingness the only thing to do is to summon a dream. Such inspiration won't be easy - dream logic occurs when we sleep for a reason. There are boundaries that thought is adverse to cross over. And don't ever become too attached to what has been done before or what is being done right now. The path to being an individual carries the most grief and mental resistance, it is so much easier to be part of a group than to be isolated and self-reliant.

Artists I admire
Mood:  irritated
Topic: email questions
Catherine from England asked me this question. I wrote a whole essay, and then near the end, mistakenly deleated it. That hurts. So here is a quick version.

What are the artists you admire?

I primairly admire self-taught artists.
Henri Rousseau
Morris Hirshfield (left graphic)
William Hawkings
Jean-Michel Basquiate
And all the paintings by anonymus persons that hang in art museums, often folk art portraits or eccentric landscapes, and then the artwork that was created so long ago that the name of the artist has been lost or at the time was not important to society.

The other artists I admire are;
Giotto
Botticelli
Hieronymus Bosch
Gauguin
Paul Klee (bottom graphic)
Odilon Redon
Pierre Bonnard
David Hockney

The Orange Grove
Mood:  happy
Topic: art in progress

16" x 23" preparitory drawing for an oil painting, paper on masonite board.

Originally I wanted angels hanging from every tree. Hanging by rope wrapped round their necks dead. I also wanted one angel to be holding the head of another angel under water, drowning the second.

I kept such impulses under control.

So when you see play in the drawing, is it mildly dark and violent?






















This is a self drawing. The bird bound by leather straps is me.

Questions from England
Mood:  happy
Topic: email questions
A student in England is doing a 1,500 word paper on mental illness and art therapy. She asked me some questions that I feel others will ask in the future. So, from now on I will answer all email research questions from students in my blog. Thus future students can simply be directed to the blog, and find pertinent facts and opinions under the topic of "email questions". Hopefully every now and then there will be a zinger question that hasn't been asked before!

When you were diagnosed?

Dear Catherine, please be more specific. There are many things any ordinary person can be diagnosed with. I assume that you mean my schizoaffective disorder. But it is always prudent to ask for a history of diagnosis because doctors do change their minds, and even, the during the course of a major mental illness there can be a real change of symptoms - due to age, environmental change, deterioration, or new medical models of diagnosis.

I might also make the case that what I am diagnosed with today may not be what I am diagnosed with tomorrow, as you will see in my final comment. It is my fevered wish not for a cure or a less serious diagnosis, but for simple stasis. If my diagnose changes in the future it can only change for the worse. Part of what keeps my illness in stasis is my artwork, and I will connect to this idea when answering your future question about art as therapy.

When I was in kindergarten I wasn't playing like the other children. I do remember having difficulty making friends. The school took it upon themselves to introduce me to a child therapy specialist who in several private sessions played a lot of word games with me. I assume she found nothing and that there was no diagnosis at the time. What she was looking for, I do not know.

When I was 12 I became deeply depressed and suicidal. My father's marriage councilor began seeing me on a weekly basis for therapy. My emotional trouble seemed to be due to an acrimonious divorce between my parents. What originally began as a quick intervention turned into a several year therapeutic relationship. This depression was my first diagnosis and was treated by therapy rather than medication because in 1980 children were not considered for anti-depressant medication, as they may well be now.

My depression abated during the final years of high school but in it's place I started to have anxiety attacks. For the anxiety attacks, which only occurred during my classes or in other public situations, my father (a doctor) proscribed a beta-blocker medication used to slow the heart beat in cases of high blood pressure. This drug was semi-successful. Unfortunately Dad was not aware of how bad the anxiety attacks were because, well, one isn't always completely honest with a parent. To manage the attacks I simply skipped a good deal of school.

In 1986 I attended Barnard College in New York City. At the end of my freshman year I was diagnosed by a school physician as having depression and started taking an anti-depressant medication. When I returned to school the next year the same physician re-diagnosed me with manic-depression and recommended that I start lithium treatment. I was frightened of this more serious diagnosis and was unable to identify the minor psychotic delusions I experienced as false. Along with these mild delusions I also remember several brief manic episodes where I talked a lot or ran a lot of miles. Because I would not take the recommended treatment the college considered me a liability and asked that I take a leave of absence until my medical condition stabilized. So I went home to live with my mother. Once home I started working part-time at a child day care. I remember being lethargic and very depressed during this job.

In May of 1988 I asked to be admitted to the Institute of Living in Hartford, Connecticut. I was starting to understand that my bizarre thoughts were delusional and I also understood that the fact that I could no longer sleep was very abnormal and dangerous. At my admission the hospital diagnosed me as having major depression with atypical psychotic symptoms. I lived on unit as a patient in this hospital for the next two years. For most of that time my diagnosis held steady, but because I was not making the anticipated recovery progress they brought in an outside consultant. I remember having a lovely conversation with him, and apparently after he quickly diagnosed me as having a schizophrenic thought disorder. I know this because of records ordered form the hospital many years later. However, what I was told at the time was that my diagnosis had changed to a manic-depressive disorder. After discharge I saw an Institute doctor that continued the deception (or error). When he moved out of state and I was assigned a new doctor and together we affirmed the diagnosis of a schizaffective disorder. I researched the criteria of the DSM III or IV and was relieved to finally view the accuracy of my diagnosis. I can only assume that the prior doctor from the Institute believed that "shocking" me with a severe diagnosis would impair recovery by keeping my spirits low, or, that he was doing me a favor by keeping the more socially frightful diagnosis of "schizophrenia" as far and separate from official paperwork as possible.

My final diagnosis was arrived at around 1995, at the age of 27. Frankly, my schizophrenic illness did take a long course and from the onset of the psychotic symptoms at 18 or 19 the illness progressed until it finally stabilized in the form that it is in now. I understand that the prodrome stage of the illness is a slow deterioration of functioning before the first onset of psychosis. However, in my case I do believe that deterioration continued after the initial psychosis, perhaps in part do to my frequent stoppage of antipsychotic medication. Because I am now completely medication compliant, and have been so for many years, the only future mental deterioration that might occur would be in the case of unusually stressful environmental factors.

For example, I saw my best friend in her mid-forties after two decades of stability deteriorate from schizoaffective to paranoid schizophrenic after the suicide of a dear, close, paranoid schizophrenic friend. After Francis died my friend's regular medication did not hold, and she was hospitalized again and again and again. They are still trying new combinations of medication to try to keep her paranoid delusions and voices under control - or at least - in a removed mental distance where she can ignore them.

More of Catherine's questions will be answered tomorrow.

What artists you admire
where and how you get your inspiration
a profile of yourself: age, job, married, children,where you live
How the illness takes over your life
How people treat you
Why you think art works as a therapy

Virus & Interview
Mood:  d'oh
Topic: building business
Got a computer virus today. Have to take my laptop to the computer geeks tomorrow to get it cleaned out. Can't stay on the internet for long. Until I get back, here is an interview just published in the February journal of Clinical Psychiatric News. When I get back online I'll insert pictures of the two drawings that I refer to in the interview.

The interview was done by phone. Now I know what it means to have statements "taken out of context".


Volume 34, Issue 2, Page 33 (February 2006)

The Art of Karen Blair
DEEANNA FRANKLIN (Associate Editor)

Article Outline
The Artist's Reflections

Copyright

The Web site for artist Karen Blair starts out with a striking statement: "All the pictures and all the writing on this site are my own. It is an honest place. My blood carries the template for schizophrenia. Because of what my blood made my brain, I have lived an unconventional life."

Growing up, Ms. Blair would have rejected the idea of becoming an artist. She was known for her ambition and drive, and after admission to Barnard College, she believed that she would become a lawyer, senator, or - as predicted by two high school friends - president.

But schizophrenia destroyed her plans, as she writes on her site, www.schizophreniaandart.com: "I could not earn a college degree, for I perceive the classroom to be a savage place. And when I make an effort my mind falls to pieces after several short hours. So I am poorly equipped for most employment."

Now at age 37, she is candid about her struggles to remain well, which medications make feasible. She is also realistic about what the drugs will never make possible. She is quick to point out that medications may smooth the rough edges of her illness, but the drugs are not a cure.

"Freud said the key to happiness is two things: work and love," Ms. Blair said. "My medications give me enough emotional stability so that I can have relationships with my family and my [husband]. I have love, and I have work, and therefore, I have happiness. Once I gave up some dreams, I was able to find this thing of becoming an artist."

The Artist's Reflections
I went to Barnard College, and I was going to be an English major. I did not start drawing until I was 30. Until then, I was trying to go to school. I was trying to recover, get a degree, work. I was trying to do everything I could to get back into mainstream society. I had been institutionalized for 2 years at The Institute for Living, and I felt that my mind was like a muscle, and all I needed to do was strengthen it. But I kept ending up in the hospital.

I lived on my own, and I used the subculture of the mentally ill. I used food banks. I live in Connecticut, which is a wealthy state, and I always felt that it was very easy to be poor when you're living in a wealthy state. There was big garbage day, and on that day people would put their furniture out on the curbs, so that's how I got furniture and art frames.

I felt I was being savvy in terms of answering the question: "How do I live on this very restricted budget and still have a good quality of life?" I walked everywhere. What was most important to me was a good pair of shoes. I enjoyed the sunshine. Sometimes I enjoyed getting caught in the rain. I was reading Camus' early diaries from when he was poor. He said, "Poor people feel like they own the sky." I'd walk down the street, and there would be this beautiful blue sky, and I was wearing my thrift store clothing, my silk shirt and my Gap chinos and a good pair of shoes. I'd look up into the sky and think: "Yeah, I feel like I own the sky. Camus was right."

In my 20s, I made a choice not to have children. I was seeing people with mental illness having their children taken away from them - sometimes, justifiably so. I could barely take care of myself, so I had my tubes tied so there would be no accidents. It was a very difficult choice, but it would break my heart to give my child up for adoption. I was 27 when I did it.

What you're seeing in [my] early works is a lot of influence of psychotic thought, for instance, use of space. Every inch of the paper is covered. There's lots of little figurines, little people, flowers. They call it compulsive drawing. The themes are very mythological. I'm not using photographs or pictures from real life. Everything is straight from my imagination, and I have no desire to make water look like real waves. There was also no reference really to what things are supposed to look like. There are monsters, mermaids, angels - that's [the impact of] Risperdal.

When I was on Risperdal, I met an art collector, and he loaned me several copies of the magazine "Raw Vision". It's on Outsider artists. It was just such a relief to see people who were making art like me. Eventually, I started wanting to be like the real artists and less like the Outsider artists. I wanted to please the people looking at my artwork. I started drawing from real life. I started using photographs of my own face for facial expressions. On the one hand, I was making art that looked like what I thought real art looked like, on the other hand the process was very slow and painstaking.

I was starting to work in oil paints, and there was a loss of pleasure, but I was feeling more like a real artist. Then I made a conscious decision to go back to my methodology under Risperdal, which is you take a blank piece of paper and a pencil and you just draw from your imagination. "The Beginning of Time" is one example. I'm on Seroquel, and I've had 7 years of being an artist, and I just take a blank piece of paper, and draw and use Cray-Pas, which is the best medium. My use of color and blending color, and indistinct space is much better. I tolerate ambiguity.

Schizophrenics have the hardest time with ambiguity. In other words, we need yes and no; black and white. We need a high degree of certainty in our lives, and if we don't have it we're going to get sick. I need a lot of sameness. My husband, Mike, knows that the sicker I get, the less I'm able to think in abstract terms. He'll say something like: "That guy's ship sailed in" when talking about someone at work, and I'll say: "Why are you talking about ships now," not understanding that it's a metaphor. When I'm sicker, I don't understand metaphors.

Genetics triggered my illness. I've got a schizophrenic uncle and aunt, both on my father's side. My father's a transplant surgeon. He's brilliant. He gives people new organs, but his brother is in a veterans' home. My aunt is schizoaffective; she's more like me. She worked in a laundry.

Mike and I talk about what we call "the myth of recovery." Some social workers and maybe some doctors are optimistic that these new drugs can help people go back to work or school. They think that recovery ends some place where patients are integrated somewhat into society. We call this a myth because there are no stories about the breakdowns that the pressures that going back to school or work cause, and I see this. Mike, who has worked in the health care industry, sees this, too.

In "Noble Vikings" I was on Risperdal. It shows the invention of water. Every bit of space is covered, and it's all very flat and crowded. There are no 3-D perspectives of reality. "The Beginning of Time" shows a maturing artist; it's very atmospheric and more ambiguous. I'm more comfortable with the medium and able to use a sophisticated theory like contrast. I did a study of light and dark contrasts. I learned it from studying books on art and looking at what other artists did. It shows best how I've matured. I used an artist's drawing of a turtle from a book for reference, so that I could better have a "realistic" -looking turtle.

I cannot socialize. This Christmas, I almost had to leave the dinner table with my family because the amount of emotional energy was so high, and I was so sensitive to it. Schizophrenia makes you so sensitive [that] you can't filter stimuli. Luckily, Mike is a homebody. He's an artist, and he loves to read. His lifestyle and mine work well together. I am very fortunate.

As told to Deeanna Franklin by Karen Blair.

The Nursury
Mood:  happy
Topic: art in progress


It's done. It's called "The Nursery". Don't know if it is any good. I can't seem to reproduce the colors in this photograph. In the original the yellow angels pop more and the blue background is lighter, softer.

It looks like outsider art. I wonder if it is outsider art. Maybe just an untutored primitive. I'll bring it to class tomorrow and see what the teacher says. I'm curious the catagory she puts it in.