Art at Belgrave Square

Art at Belgrave Square — paintings by psychiatrists and people who have suffered mental health problems — is part of Mind Odyssey.

The College is very grateful to Henry Boxer, Director of the Henry Boxer Gallery, London, for the loan of a painting from his renowned collection of ‘Outsider and Visionary’ art. The painting Inside Banstead Hospital by Rosemary Carson, a service user, will be exhibited in the College from 10 May to 10 June 2002.

Rosemary Carson (b 1952)

Since the age of 6, Carson has occasionally experienced the sensation of maggots moving in her body. She describes her childhood as rather unhappy and attempted suicide at the age of 15. Since then she has spent periods in psychiatric care and her treatment has included drug and electric therapies. Her work featured in the exhibition Private Worlds — Outsider and Visionary Art at the Orleans House Gallery, Twickenham, last year. The Wellcome Trust has recently acquired one of her paintings for its permanent collection.

Painting has long been important to Carson but never more so after she became ill again in 1996 when she started hearing voices. She spontaneously began to paint faces that she subsequently receognised as fellow patients from her earlier stays in psychiatric hospitals. This brought back memories. The need to capture these memories was reinforced by the urgings of the ‘underlings’ (spirits of dead patients), so called because they speak to her under the voices of others. Mostly they encourage her in her work, but sometimes they become frightening and destructive. At these times, she enters a local psychiatric unit until she feels able to return to painting in safety.