Aug 4, 2022

Read research into bipolar psychosis  –

Read Research and Lived Experience of Psychosis – Kathleen McVey

Artists research –

Artists – Kathleen McVey (ed.ac.uk)

Development –

Printmaking, paintings and sculptures – Kathleen McVey (ed.ac.uk)

Tutorial Notes and Printmaking Notes –

Tutorial notes, Thinking and Detailed Learning re Printmaking – Kathleen McVey

 

Jun 9, 2022

Large painting for degree show – ive spent the entire semester on this piece  –

DEGREE SHOW PAINTING BEFORE –

 

 

 

 

 

 

Communicating and visualising psychosis through printmaking – I’m finding collographs a good way for me to develop this. They are cheap to make and through viscosity printmaking I can capture colour that is not directly intended. I don’t know whats going to come out until the print is complete. I think the process can be seen as a reflection of psychosis in the way I’m using it. (first time viscocity pm been done at the uni in 20 years!)

180x90cm painting – based of a memory of an episode where i vividly in my whole body remembered my childhood trauma. The painting is developed from an etching and portrays 2 people one under covers and the other facing away. The one facing away has crosses and a halo like a saviour but she’s not. The other is crawling under a blanket.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jun 9, 2022

Continuing from my research into childhood trauma, I am developing this to looking at how this early trauma manifests in serious mental illness. Focussing on BD 1 as I can contribute lived experience. Obviously this is just one symptom of the illness and over time I may pick from other areas.

Here is where I will post reading materials that I find resourceful and relevant to my practice now.

I’m very interested in psychosis in bipolar disorder, phychosis manifests itself differently in bipolar people compared to schizophrenic people.

My Psychosis 

Accessed my medical records from my GP  –

I suffered psychosis for roughly 1 month during a manic episode.

angry raspberry

A raspberry sits on a dish looking at me and judging me I could tell it was really angry and could see into my soul.

Granny Smith Chicken nuggets

Went to Mcdonalds for my chicken nugget meal and was confused but found it very funny that the chicken nuggets tasted exactly like granny smith apples.

Star

Sitting in the flat in my living room a small star came into my sight, I looked at it and for what seemed like a while it came closer and closer to me, it was so bright that when i shut my eyes it hurt then I would open them again and it was right up at my face trying to blind me. Don’t remember it going away.

shadow people

In my room lying unable to sleep because people were trying to break through my window they were black but transparent – according to my notes they were aliens but I dont remember this.

Green

Every day the colour green followed me about. when I went on walks especially. I remember walking up Rosemount and thinking the pavement must have grass on it but it wasnt grass it was just green. I was very stressed at why green was following me. This hallucination stays with me even out of episodes I still see the colours.

Colours

I saw colours like blobs everywhere. I remember at one point thinking everyone had a colour I remember Matthews colour was maroon and Lanas was pink and mine was red. But the colour I saw were floating around. I still see them but they’re usually a warning. But they progressively got worse and became the green that followed me. They can be different colours but mostly pastels like pinks purples and yellows , then strong greens.

Joanna Lumley and rowan atkison

Walking to the bus stop they walked past me on the street and I found it odd they’d both be in Aberdeen together.

KNEW EVERYONE I SAW INTIMATELY

Everyone I walked past I felt a strong intimate connection with, like they could see into my soul and I could see into theirs. I felt a rush of love whenever I looked into someones eyes.

Implanted thoughts

Thoughts I had weren’t my own, they had been put there. On reflection I’m still convinced that these were intrusive thoughts and not implanted thoughts but my notes mention aliens implanting them, this resulted in an overdose as a thought was implanted to take all my meds.

Hit a woman with a wine bottle

According to my notes I believed that Aliens had inserted a thought to hit a woman over the head with a wine bottle. I dont remember the aliens but I remember the thought holding the wine bottle and seeing the woman.

Bones trying to escape

Apparently I thought my bones were trying to escape – I dont remember this specifically but it made me laugh.

Bomb in my brain

I describe a bomb being in my brain that has control over my thoughts that was trying to ruin my life and wanted me to die.

fizzy

I reported that before these episodes I feel fizzy.

spanish

In a cafe with my boyfriend at the time and everyone was speaking spanish apart from us. matthew said they werent speaking spanish they were just speaking english. On reflection I remember thinking oh it must be a dialect i dont understand.

my soul

I remember being in uni and my friends coming to see me and I coukdnt look them in the eyes because the affect on my body was too much I thought they could see into every part of my being so not looking at them meant they wouldn’t see the badness.

radiator

I was very distressed by a radiator. I knew what it was and what it was called it was a radiator. But i didn’t know what it was.

Aberdeen

I knew I was in Aberdeen but I didn’t know that it was Aberdeen and I didn’t recognise it as Aberdeen.

Other Peoples Psychosis

My friend saw cats jumping out of crisp packets when she came out of surgery.

Bipolar Disorder: What It Was Like to Experience Psychosis (themighty.com)

“There are demons in me and I need them out of me — I can’t take it. I need someone to sedate me or something. Please, get them out of me. You have to get them out of me!”

Psychosis – Hearing voices, seeing things, and unusual beliefs (healthtalk.org)

“Lights seem to glow brighter and brighter, things floated against my eyes, covered my eyes, they disappeared and on another occasion when I closed my eye they still remained, so I was really, really ill. The last episode when I still living at home was that I felt like some force was turning me round in a circle in the room. It was literally trying to push me downstairs but the force.”

“I thought that my hands were aging, like every half an hour on the half an hour. Because… like physically see them getting older. And then, you know, but I knew, I knew like cognitively you don’t age every half hour on the half hour, but yet I could actually see that I was aging and so I was like doing my working with like …I pulled my sleeves down so I couldn’t actually see what was going on and still that is something I still struggle with.”

Psychosis: from seeing snakes to picturing a future | MHT (mentalhealthtoday.co.uk)

“One person I knew in hospital saw people covered in snakes, while another saw people on fire. I myself have heard threatening and taunting voices, saying: “You wait until you see what I’m going to do to you!”

REading

Psychosis in Bipolar Disorder: Does It Represent a More ‘Severe’ Illness? – PMC (nih.gov)

– Psychosis, generally defined as the occurrence of hallucinations or delusions, is a common feature across numerous psychiatric disorders.^1–3 An exemplar psychotic illness is schizophrenia, which is often associated with chronic psychosis symptoms and poor psychosocial outcome. Psychosis is also an especially prevalent phenotype in bipolar disorder (BP), with greater than half of all individuals diagnosed with BP experiencing psychotic mood episodes in their lifetime.⁴ Consequently, there is a common clinical assumption that BP with psychosis represents a more ‘severe’ form of illness than BP without psychosis, and may resemble the clinical and functional deterioration commonly seen in primary psychotic disorders.

Symptoms – Psychosis – NHS (www.nhs.uk)Someone who develops psychosis will have their own unique set of symptoms and experiences, according to their particular circumstances.But in general, 3 main symptoms are associated with a psychotic episode:

• hallucinations
• delusions
• confused and disturbed thoughts

Hallucinations

Hallucinations are where someone sees, hears, smells, tastes or feels things that do not exist outside their mind.

• sight – seeing colours, shapes or people
• sounds – hearing voices or other sounds
• touch – feeling touched when there is nobody there
• smell – an odour that other people cannot smell
• taste – a taste when there is nothing in the mouth

Delusions

A delusion is where a person has an unshakeable belief in something untrue.

A person with persecutory delusions may believe an individual or organisation is making plans to hurt or kill them.

A person with grandiose delusions may believe they have power or authority. For example, they may think they’re the president of a country or they have the power to bring people back from the dead.

People who have psychotic episodes are often unaware that their delusions or hallucinations are not real, which may lead them to feel frightened or distressed.

Confused and disturbed thoughts

People with psychosis sometimes have disturbed, confused, and disrupted patterns of thought. Signs of this include:

• rapid and constant speech
• disturbed speech – for example, they may switch from one topic to another mid-sentence
• a sudden loss in their train of thought, resulting in an abrupt pause in conversation or activity

Cognitive Deficits in Psychotic Disorders: A Lifespan Perspective – PMC (nih.gov)

Premorbid cognitive functioning in bipolar disorder

In comparison to premorbid cognitive function in schizophrenia, fewer studies have been conducted on premorbid cognitive deficits in bipolar disorder. Of these studies, even fewer have examined premorbid impairments associated with bipolar disorder with psychotic features (Daban et al. 2006). In terms of research examining bipolar disorder in general (i.e., including bipolar disorder with and without psychotic features), studies largely fail to find evidence of significant premorbid cognitive impairments (Lewandowski et al. 2011a; Martino et al. 2015; Mollon and Reichenberg 2017; Parellada et al. 2017). For example, several studies failed to find premorbid IQ deficits among children and adolescents who subsequently developed bipolar disorder (Cannon et al. 2002; Sorensen et al. 2012; Zammit et al. 2004). Furthermore, there is evidence that higher cognitive functioning is associated with the development of bipolar disorder (Tiihonen et al. 2005; MacCabe et al. 2013). A significant limitation of the existing research is the lack of studies comparing bipolar disorder with and without psychotic features on premorbid cognitive functioning (Parellada et al. 2017).

What we learn about bipolar disorder from large‐scale neuroimaging: Findings and future directions from the ENIGMA Bipolar Disorder Working Group – PMC (nih.gov)

Toward prevention of bipolar disorder in at-risk children: Potential strategies ahead of the data – PMC (nih.gov)

Second, if family history variables are combined with the occurrence of II.) adversity in childhood, such as verbal, physical, or sexual abuse, risk is further heightened. The age of onset of bipolar disorder in the US averages below age 13 (Post et al., 2016c); the average age of onset is 26 years if there is neither a positive family history of bipolar disorder in parents or grandparents nor a history of childhood adversity. A history of only verbal abuse in childhood (in the absence of physical or sexual abuse) is also associated with an earlier onset and a more difficult course of bipolar disorder in adulthood (Post et al., 2015a). Aas et al (2016) reports more than a dozen studies linking childhood adversity to a more difficult course of illness in early onset bipolar disorder. They also cite 6 studies reporting adversity as a risk factor for BP onset. Maniglio (2013) discussed 20 studies linking a higher incidence of adversity in families with a bipolar offspring versus controls.

Visual hallucinations associated with multimodal hallucinations, suicide attempts and morbidity of illness in psychotic disorders. – PMC (nih.gov)

Characteristics of patients with schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder and bipolar disorder according to visual hallucinations are presented in Table 1. In univariate logistic regression analyses, patients with VH were similar to patients without VH for most sociodemographic characteristics, including age, sex, dependency of living situation, children, employment and handedness. However, patients with VH were less likely to have graduated from college compared to patients without VH. Diagnostically, patients with VH were more likely to have schizoaffective disorder, less likely to have bipolar disorder and more likely to have an anxiety disorder. Patients with VH also had a greater total number of SCID diagnoses.

Jun 9, 2022

I am a multimedia artist working in Edinburgh, Scotland. My work encapsulates my own experience with bipolar disorder and mood dysregulation.
I communicate and interogate the complexities and extremes through a personal language of jarring mark making, juxtaposed with representational objects.
My research explores the challenges of trauma survivors, creating a visual narrative of their experiences with intent to interact with and create a necessary dialogue around mental health to society at large.
Exposing mental illness is a vital part in gaining public recognition, to address a vastly misunderstood area.

 

 

PSYHIC AUTONOMISM

 

Etching- plate destroyed now From the night it happened Etching ghost cat loses eyeball Etching dog deer

 

Fetal tissue – looking at USA – 3rd world country – going to make a flag utilising these colours

Vaginal swabs –

Idea – wire sculpture that mimics lines of printmaking/drawing – emersive with fabric mimicking lights

Whitespace

Placement inspired by Howerdina Pindells exhibition at the Friitmarket – black hand casts under flag

@kathleen.mcvey.artist  instaGram

Apr 29, 2022

I’ve compiled a list of the main contemporary artists I’ve been researching in relation to the work I’m focussing on now – a focus on visualising emotions, looking again at  german expressionism, which I’ve always had a strong connection with,  I won’t list them as we all know them but see below if necessary.

Below is a compiled shortened list of what I read, artists I look at and what is behind my recent work – 

Most of the reading I do is from psychological and psychiactric journals and books, the work that i develop to paintings/ etchings are from sketches i do in states of anger or dissociation. See below example of progression fro sketch to painting. I have been working on board with woodfiller which acts as an etching surface and allows aggressive marks to evolve. I’ve been focusing on 2 colours – representative of dichotonomy.

Artists

Interested in Missy Douglas’ project where she painted daily representing her moods after coming off her meds for bipolar t 2 to visualise the disorder. The project lasted one year. I cannot mimic but want to interrogate more the idea of representing what affects me most now which is emotional dyregulation. I want to visualise the shorter episodes  and may develop this to be more representative of the survivors community rather than from just my individual experience.

https://www.thecollector.com/artists-who-depicted-traumatic-brutal-experiences-ww1/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4091823/

”Affect dysregulation, defined as the impaired ability to regulate and/or tolerate negative emotional states, and has been associated with interpersonal trauma and post-traumatic stress. Affect regulation difficulties also play a role in many other psychiatric conditions, including anxiety disorders and mood disorders, specifically major depression in youth and bipolar disorder throughout the life span.”

Dissociation is a mental process of disconnecting from one’s thoughts, feelings, memories or sense of identity.

When a person becomes emotionally dysregulated, they may react in an emotionally exaggerated manner to environmental and interpersonal challenges by displaying bursts of anger, crying, accusing, passive-aggressive behaviors, or by creating conflict. It is not unusual for a person to have poor reality testing when dysregulated—this relates to sensory pathways being shut down during the period of high emotional reactivity.

What artists have been expressing similar?

Nancy Princenthal’s Unspeakable Acts  –

Marina Abramovic – Suzanne Lacy – Ana Mendieta (Sara Otten) – Adrian Piper

– challenging abuse externally

Anna Park

Arghavaan Khosravi – probes personal and political issues Iran. Reacted to Muslim ban USA.

Becky Suss – painter focusing on female generational family (positive light)

Cecili Brown

https://gagosian.com/artists/cecily-brown/

Christina Forrer – fokelore but without knowing content I read torture

https://www.luhringaugustine.com/artists/christina-forrer

Christina Quarrles

sexuality, queerness

Clare Woods

Much of Woods’ recent work is concerned with fragility, vulnerability, mortality and disability; the delicate border that exists between sickness and health, cruelty and humanity, and ultimately life and death. Perhaps this explains why bodies come to mind even when the images are not directly about them. Despite the varying degrees of brightly coloured abstraction and compositional distortions, Woods’ anthropomorphic studies bring to mind heads, limbs and torsos. It is like seeing the body through a distorted lens, defamiliarising and estranging it.

Genivieve Figgis – Irish artist also inspired by Goya  – incorperates humour

 

Kara Walker

Rita Akermann

Robin F Williams  – ref sexuaity, childhood -a sound around noone

Zoe Buckman

 

Mar 30, 2022

Embassy exhibition final  – woodfiller, ink, oil, emulsion and acrylic on board. 130×130 cm.

Mar 16, 2022

https://vimeo.com/684432857

Dying celtic top orange- reflection of the highest polarisation. Orange- order – green – catholic – synopsis-

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-18769781.amp

 

 

Mar 3, 2022

https://vimeo.com/681900568

Feb 25, 2022

White Flag  – capitulation / for the wounded

 

 

 

 

 

 

White flags have signified capitulation for thousands of years (by soldiers).

Most historians believe blank banners first caught on because they were easy to distinguish.

Civil War soldiers waved white flags of truce before collecting their wounded.

The various meanings of the flag were later codified in the Hague and Geneva Conventions of the 19th and 20th centuries. Those same treaties also forbid armies from using the white flag to fake a surrender and ambush enemy troops.

Flag of Truce – noun Military. a white flag displayed as an invitation to the enemy to confer, or carried as a sign of peaceful intention by one sent to deal with the enemy.

Ref – Artist folder blog – Sonya Clark – confederate flag of truce   Peter Liversige  – Hello Flags Edinburgh, curious to know why exactly they are printed onto white. John Gerrard  – Virtual Smoke Flag billowing in the wind  – WESTERN FLAG. Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg  –  created an installation, ultimately composed of 267,000 white flags at the DC Armory Parade Ground, to make visible the human toll of the continuing pandemic.

What does it mean to fly the whited out union jack? – A woman has agreed to let me fly it in her garden for 2 weeks, I will document the weathering.

Wendy Ross,  80 years old

I walk past Wendy’s house every day – usually she has a saltire up in the front garden but the winds blew it away. I yesterday asked her if I could fly the white union jack on her flagpole to which she was a bit confused at and conflicted over having a union jack in her garden. I went round today and she invited me inside for a conversation which she let me record –  around nationalism, identity, life in Scotland and politics, see attached interview.

She is a retired housewife who worked briefly after her divorce at the Rosyth dockyard.

She would not touch the flag with her hands and said she asked her friend if he would help mount it for me, he refused because it is a union flag.  

 

The weathering of the flag has changed the interrogation of capitulation to a visual of the the Scottish weather stripping away all signs of truce or reconciliation.

Having issues getting access to flagpoles as people don’t want a union flag up in their gardens – have posted in the local facebook group to explain my intentions.

Below video using the union jack in my last performance/experiment – I treated the flag as many here see it. it hangs in a tree with discarded plastic, a branch next to dog shit and in a bin. I’ve played the sash over this footage.

Overlapping interviews with Wendy over footage I took of both the performance flag – the white flag and others that I see around Rosyth. Treating the flag like dog shit on the hedge or a discarded bag in the tree,

Feb 9, 2022