The Circle of Fire figurative expressionist watercolour painting and is a journey into mental illness .
I met another artist living few hundred metres from where I live while walking “Mitsou”. Kind, proud, well presented and smiling he told me all about his art journey and his happy demeanour charmed me instantly.
Soon he told me about his condition, his cerebral palsy and some of his cognitive troubles. Cerebral palsy can affects the way your brain develops and can lead to cognitive impairment but mostly it creates spastic diplegia hence mobility issues.
Our respective artistic journey has been influenced by each other friendship from that moment but sometimes my inability to understand his frustration is palpable! His occasional stubborn limitations bring debilitating seizures and he experiences occasional bursts of aggressive depressions which brings him to perform the occasional mutilation to feel alive to feel worth . Mental illness is real and uncontrollable sometimes.
I have witnessed one of these moments of despair.“The Circle of Fire “ is an allegory to my experience where his angst reaches dangerous levels that words won’t start to express his dread and he needs to feel something. Tommy is depicted here in my watercolour painting in my usual figurative expressionist style in one of these moments, feet out of the circle of fire the second half of his body is struggling to remain in the secure zone. It's torture and his mind is being harassed, the confusion needs validation and mutilation reminds him he is real. Pain is a form of conversation. There is light and darkness as in everyone’s life, the depth of which is impossible to judge and mental illness is just one step away.
This is a large original watercolour painting size:110MX60cm
Medium: watercolour on cotton rag Arches paper 300gsm
$3500.00AU
