MY MENTALITY

“Mental health was always something I never worried about, I never saw how important it is until it was too late. After going through an episode of psychosis, lasting almost a week, I was hospitalized for 3 weeks. It was an intense recovery with a lot of help from doctors, nurses and my loved ones. As a visual artist I'm able to create work to represent my mental health journey throughout this period of time in my life.

Within my body of work there are different elements that relate back to mood disorders. I took the main stages of a manic-depressive episode and showed it through my expressive portraits. Each portrait uses colour and expression to represent the different mood I wanted to portray. By using myself as the subject it allows for a more personal and intimate representation of my experience.

Mental health is now a huge aspect in my life, I wanted to show within my body of work what can result in not caring for your mental health. By using colourful self portraits to represent all different aspects of mental health disorders my body of work was created.”

-Leigha Stiles