Artist Statement:

I am a self-taught artist, and I have a diagnosis of schizophrenia, depression and anxiety.

I find expressing myself through art very therapeutic, and a good coping strategy.

My art can sometimes be seen as too dark and negative. Some people may argue that mental-health related art should only be about recovery.

But what is recovery? It isn’t a cure and an end point. When living with schizophrenia, there is no end point, it is ongoing, and it is something you have to live with all your life.

And that’s the point I want to make. To me recovery is about living with illness.

Yes, I am still experiencing these negative things, but I am still here, telling my story, turning it into positivity.

My goal in this exhibition is to help those who are going through the same thing. I want them to know they are not on their own, and they can live alongside their illness, and to inspire them to create their own art, too.

I sometimes think about those who have just been diagnosed, and they go to an exhibition about mental health, and the theme being ‘recovery’.

I can picture paintings with rainbows and smiley suns and those people thinking; ‘No, this isn’t me, this isn’t what I am going through’.

Then they see one of my paintings, ‘Yes, this guy gets it’, and look he is still here.

I was always told you have three options in life. You can let something ‘destroy you’, ‘define you’, or ‘make you stronger’.

And I think, that’s what my art does. It’s not a weakness, but a strength.

“When I worked on pieces that were difficult for me, it opened discussions, conversations that I couldn’t have had before. This has helped me to open-up and move forward with my therapy.”

The artists I admire and inspire me are: Francis Bacon, Edvard Munch, Maria Lassnig, Frida Kahlo, Henri Mattisse, Pablo Piccaso, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Tracey Emin, and Vincent Van Gough.

Curators Statement:

I first met Thom back in 2018 when he asked to be able to come and see our exhibitions on days when we weren’t open to the public.

Since then, we have kept in touch and after being invited to see work he had in a group exhibition on mental health in 2019, we had a conversation to talk about a solo exhibition of his work in our gallery. A long time in the planning and with Covid in between we are delighted, at last, to bring Thom’s work to a new audience with this exhibition, ‘Not All Rainbows and Sunshine’.

There is an admirable honesty about Thom and his desire to produce art that reflects aspects of his life living with schizophrenia. These paintings and drawings are an interpretation of lived experience that could never be guessed at by looking at the man.

The truth is that when we look at and see any person, we rarely see the reality of their lived experience. For Thom his art is a conduit whereby he can explore and share aspects of his medical condition with himself and others and, as he says:

“When I worked on pieces that were difficult for me, it opened discussions, conversations that I couldn’t have had before. This has helped me to open-up and move forward with my therapy.”

Part of the value of this exhibition is also to act as a channel to open conversations about how art can be a vehicle for self-exploration and for the communication of life experiences that go beyond everyday language. Looking at the list of artists that have inspired Thom we see some artists whose art has been used to explore psychological relationships with existence, between the physical touchable world and the internality of lived existence.  

Art has the power to raise awareness and pose questions about what it is to be human. Through art there is a chance to explore difference by revealing that which we have in common and by understanding and not hiding from the vulnerability of others and of our own vulnerabilities.



Roy Smith