Condition: Parkinson’s Disease

This person sees strangers in his house no one else can see. Young children rush about damaging furniture and writing on the walls. He waves his stick at them in frustration and they slip away through the walls. They watch and talk but he cannot hear them. This work references El Greco’s ‘The cleansing of the temple’ but here the viewer drives the intruders out of the house. The sombre tones evoke an anxious and oppressive waking dream.

Condition: Parkinson’s Disease

The unconscious is inexhaustible and uncontrollable. Its force surpasses us. It is as mysterious as the last particle of a brain cell. Even if we knew it, we could not reconstruct it.’ (Tzara, T.1922). This image is a response to meetings on zoom with a patient suffering from Parkinson’s disease. The narrative of painting is a layered dialogue. This art piece is an attempt to portray a felt experience exploring a specific hallucination, one that involves a male Victorian funeral bearer, like an image often portrayed as a ‘grim reaper’. I have become a witness, the patient in the painting is facing me, there are now three people in the room or art piece, myself, the patient, and the vision.

As I face the patient witnessing the hallucination, I hear the dialogue between the patient and myself. ‘I am the colour, colour is safe’ ‘He is the shadows. My response to these words is fill the patient with colour. I asked, ‘what do you do when he appears?’ the answer was; ‘I centre myself and remain calm, then I begin to realise he is not real’. I have intentionally made the arms and hands and fingers longer, trailing and seeking the ground in an urgent quest for stability, pursuing what is real and felt through the body. The coloured figure emerges, in a standing position, facing me with only the eyes, twisted sideways, seeing the funeral bearer from a peripheral viewpoint. The eyes navigate what is around us to ‘make sense’ or decipher information for survival, and that evidence is processed first. The image, projected out of the mind, becomes strengthened when it has been defined. He has been given an identity, personality and assigned to his place as a threat rather than a gain. The character has had a verb applied to it, ‘he watches me’, this is one of power over the patient.The words became more influential to me and it is for that reason I have included them in the painting. They are hand painted to reveal a sense of self and feeling rather than a documented format, which implies authority and constitution. The language dictates an emotion of fear and a questioning of ‘self’. ‘He watches me’. ‘Why does he watch you’, I asked? ‘He is waiting for me.’ This potential threat to self becomes evident because the figure has become individualised. The patient knows he is not real but still fears him. I asked, ‘do you call a friend?’ The patient replied, ‘no, I would be worried about what they would think of me’.Upon reflection, it occurred to me that the patient must not only feel judged by the figure, but in addition, potentially by other people.The courage of the patient in the first instance, to relay her experiences to a stranger is enabling, and secondly, to remain calm to ‘place him as unreal’, when the mind has told her he is actual is empowering. The ‘knowing that we know’ part of ourselves, wins through and the reoccurring temporary battle is won.

Condition: Schizophrenia

Both works consist of symbols layered on top of one another. Each symbol represents a concept that my interviewee, an artist going by the moniker SK172, wanted included in the pieces I made.The symbols cover concepts such as surveillance, technology, virtual reality and science-fiction. The films, books and video games that SK172 likes best often touch on these genres and ideas. They also play into some of the hallucinations SK172 described, for example their movements and thoughts being watched and tracked with technology operated by malign forces. The symbols in the works also refer to SK172’s own art practice, particularly the motifs they use to articulate aspects of their experience of schizophrenia.

Condition: Parkinson’s Disease

The first artwork created by working with the Parkinson’s patient comes across as a very calm image. This was inspired by the person themselves, who, having experienced images of people who have passed on in their prior life, was, at first, untroubled by their visits. At first, they were people they knew, so felt secure in their own memories.

Groups of people chatting started to appear but were elongated and raised above the ground as if they were projected from another time or space. They ignored their viewer.

Consequently, as strangers began to appear in stages of undress, children playing next to them on the sofa and males behaving inappropriately, they felt far less comfortable.

Currently shouting at the people to leave, works, as they start to fade away within moments. Therefore, I painted the very slim chatting people who were standing, above the ground whilst also portraying a single male, who, with direct gaze, at the viewer, was touching himself inappropriately. I decided not to make what he was doing too obvious.

Condition: Parkinson’s Disease

Activity gathering.

That shouldn’t be there.

Welcome the birds in, eyes sharply open.

Outside becomes inside becomes outside.

Visitors unchosen.

Interruptions shape life, momentum momentum.

Condition: Parkinson’s Disease

Activity gathering.

That shouldn’t be there.

Welcome the birds in, eyes sharply open.

Outside becomes inside becomes outside.

Visitors unchosen.

Interruptions shape life, momentum momentum.

Condition: Schizophrenia

This collaboration made me think into a younger me, silly hair clips, influenceable, hyper gendered, a product of her time.

My Little Pony: absurd mutated innocence.OR she is a frog, ready to transform.Something machine-like is threatening to chew her up. An aggressive shape or a computer console controller.That feeling of being observed. By who? Afuture self or someone outside?