I’m a bed bound self-portrait artist working mainly with photographic self-portraiture. My distinctively dark and evocative self-depictions, intimately reflect my ongoing struggles with mental illness (severe anxiety, depression and auditory hallucinations). My work’s created within the same 2 by 1.5 metre space; my bed, the only place I feel safe enough to create. The pandemic’s had a debilitating impact upon my already fragile mental health. For example my hair pulling disorder, which I believe is related to my anxiety, worsened to the point where I now wear wigs and my nights are now plagued with voices. I don’t remember the last time I left home, or felt the fresh air upon my skin or saw the daisies that remind me of my imaginary and only childhood friend ‘Daisy’.
My life and art have become inextricably entwined, to bury my struggles deep within would allow them to thrive, but through my use of art as therapy, I’m offered a cathartic release.
I’m an Ambassador and recently a piece from my ‘A Bedtime Story’ series exploring how I mourned for my hair was acquired for The New Art Gallery Walsall’s Twenty Twenty Collection. Forthcoming exhibitions include my first solo display ‘A Bedtime Story’ at The George Marshall Medical Museum, Worcester and ‘Anxiety House’ at The Sharp Gallery, London (part of South London and Maudsley NHS trust). ‘Anxiety House’ is the first of a series of exhibitons I aim to curate using dolls houses and working with a collective I have brought together of disabled house or bed bound artists.