'Going Mental'

My final artwork shows mental health through social upheaval. Mental health was only taken ‘seriously’ in 1946, but even today few people care about it or even acknowledge it, preferring to blame ‘hormones’ or ‘mood swings. People struggling with mental health problems often feel alone, like no one sees them. This is shown in my artwork as I decided to draw eyes surrounding the person in the middle, but all the eyes are looking away.

Mental health issues are become more common worldwide with around 50% of people being diagnosed with a mental disorder at one point in their life, yet no one wants to accept this. I want to draw attention to this issue by portraying mental health through art. I chose to use the colours red and blue, because I believe their contrast draws attention to the differences in each and causes them both to stand out. To me, red and blue create a panicked, desperate feeling and I wanted to portray this in my final product.

I was inspired by the artist Saira-Jayne Jones, who is an artist who struggles with mental illnesses. She created an artwork called ‘Mind Vomit’ which heavily inspired my final artwork. In ‘Mind Vomit’ Saira-Jayne Jones used colours to express emotions, in this the colour red showed pain and the colour blue showed sadness. I feel like this relates to my artwork, as the brain is blue showing the sadness and emptiness felt by the person, and the background is red showing the pain they feel in everyday society.

I also used inspiration from the ‘forgotten Man’ which was a big theme used in the 1930s. Forgotten Men were societies outcasts, and were shown alone, with rounded forms and slumped shoulders to emphasize their troubles. I used this in my final artwork. I used lino printing, sharpie, pencil and white-out to create this artwork. The title ‘going mental’ means both mental, as in the mental health of the person in the image deteriorating as they feel more and more alienated, and ‘going mental’ as in the expression ‘going to go mental’ which means becoming extremely angry. This relates to me people choosing to ignore mental health upsets me as it is an important issue.