Another award

Thank you to Gary over at Klahanie.

I am not going to bother with the '7 interesting facts about myself', seeing as I did that quite recently. But I will mention that Gary passed this award on to people who blog about positive attitudes towards mental health, and positive distractions to cope with symptoms.

As I am sure I have mentioned before, much of my art and also much of my poetry is a way of expressing my feelings. These feelings are both positive and negative. But the important thing is getting them out rather than keeping them in. I am pretty sure that my art would be very different if it wasn't for my illness, but it still remains true that psychosis and anxiety are only a small part of who I am. And I hope that there is at least a small difference that I am making on this blog towards reducing the stigma attached to mental illness.

Return to Reality

Acrylic on canvas, 2011, 9" x 12".

This was painted shortly after going on antipsychotic medication. I was in a very confused state at the time, unsure of what was what any more. But through this uncertainty was hope, hope that I would find a way out of the horror movie that was my life for so long. The confusion went on for a number of months as I had been ill for a long time, but these days it doesn't bother me much any more (unless I find myself in the recovery stage of what are now much shorter episodes).

I am feeling mostly good currently, so I thought it would be best to publish a positive picture of my recovery.