Your website and your YouTube videos make me very happy. not manic. Happy and hopeful.
and i also say to myself, “oy, what a huge amount of work”.
thank you for your website and sharing your experience.
artwork
For five months this page has been blank. Today is May 23, 2008 and I have begun to upload some old artwork.
Please understand that I am not a serious artist. I have never been trained in art or gone to art school. I don’t take these drawings seriously and neither should anyone else. These are scans slightly altered from the originals. I am not going to watermark them because I doubt anyone would bother to take this stuff.
These images I made when I was undoubtedly mentally ill. Most of the images on this page were made between 1993 and 1995. I was about as bipolar and schizophrenic as I ever was. In retrospect and analysis you will see a common theme to my drawings. A safe, secure fortified structure in a hard to reach, rugged, isolated and sometimes beautiful place. I was 20 years old and in my heart I longed for a quiet place, well defended, far from others and I dreamed endlessly, fantasized constantly about it.
Castle, bridge and mountain
The medium for many of these sketches is a 3inch x 5 inch blue lined memo pad. My favorite implement is a medium ball point pen, black or blue. Really, I am not that sophisticated or bleeding edge. I kept a small memo pad with me where ever I went for a few years. I had the idea of making enchanted windows, portals to the places that I rendered. If you stare at them too long you might go to those places.
Cliff wall pass to the City
It is hard to come up with catchy captions or titles. I had no pretensions of Picasso when I did this stuff. I made these drawings for the sheer pleasure of making my mental images real.
Cottage at Newbury Lake
The occasional purplish smear-stain on some of the images is unfortunately spilled wax from a black candle. Any other stains likely to be coffee.
Tree at the side of a brook
Here is a series of castle sketches in different environments.
Castle at the mountainside
Castle, cemetary and barren trees
Island castle, high tide and palm trees
Please excuse the scibblings that show through the image from doodling on the back side like an idiot.
Remote castle, perilous road
This next image, along with many others here was inspired both by the writings of fantasy author Roger Zelazney as well as artwork seen in the card game Magic the Gathering
Under a strangely stippled sky
A window into a Strange World
This next sketch is my old room in the Hell House.
This is the room my parents forced me to stay in for months. They effectively banished me as a result of the investigation into our home over allegations of child abuse. I was not allowed to speak to anyone or come out except for school and the bathroom. As cells go, it was luxurious.
Please note, at age 13 I already had what I wanted, isolation, a bed, a desk a bookcase with books and a chair to read them in. All I did was read, meditate, listen to music and do a lot of thinking about life in this room all by myself for months.
This was my bedroom in my grandparents house. On that bed I performed my first albeit poorly planned overdose.
Depressing I know.
…
Responses
By: Sophie Walker on May 18, 2008
at 12:09 am
I liked looking at your art. You do have talent! I especially liked the Castle, Bridge, and Mountain. I would like to buy a copy of it later when I have more money, if that would be possible.
I felt sad to read, “I am not going to watermark them because I doubt anyone would bother to take this stuff.” I don’t think you are giving yourself enough credit.
I have a friend who was just put into the “Behavior” part of our hospital. I think the two of you are similar. She’s very psychic. They’ve put her on some horrible meds. I’m hoping that I can help her later on. I’m trying to learn about different alternative types of healing.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts and feelings with us. I am grateful I ran across them.
Bonnie
By: Bonnie on June 12, 2008
at 10:32 am
Hello Bonnie,
Thank you so much for your feedback. I am taken by surprise actually by your comment. You are more than welcome to purchase any of these any time. I would not even know what to charge. It never occurred to me.
I am very tempted to see if I still have it. I have not tried to draw for purpose or pleasure in years. I was so preoccupied with self healing and being outdoors that doodling was the furthest thing from my mind for a long time. I found these pics going through storage boxes.
In truth it feels like a muscle, long unused but I am guessing it still works.
About the watermark. I guess I just would have felt full of myself as opposed to not giving myself credit. Until May, no human other than my brother have seen any of these. I did not know whether they sucked bad and people were going to laugh at me for calling this art.
If I lack the self esteem issues of the past I may have an inflated self esteem from time to time so I try to be self effacing whenever I can just to level.
Anyway, feel free to contact me about it whenever. My email is on my Home page.
As for your friend. I am very sorry to hear of it. It breaks my heart. About the worst thing you can do to a naturally sensitive, aware, intuitive or psychic person is destroy that sensitivity through those horrible meds. If I think about her languishing in a ward doped on brain killers I will cry right where I sit.
I surely hope you can help your friend and that she is able to find peace within.
By: Jane on June 12, 2008
at 12:54 pm
Intresting artworks, intresting context… :I
I have bipolar disorder too - I’m graphic from Poland - this is my website with my artworks: http://www.ratz.pl. Bipolar is amazingly stimulate creativity don’t You think? 
It’s one positive aspect of bipolar…
Your blog - it’s a great thing!
greetings
By: ratz on June 12, 2008
at 2:57 pm
hello ratz! thanks for your feedback and for stopping by.
to be honest bipolar has nothing to do with my creativity. My artistic inclination is a gift of my mother’s genes.
I was artistic before I was Dxd. I was artistic while I was most seriously ill. Yet long after I healed from the symptoms of bipolar, my creativity remains.
I cant see it as a aspect of bipolar positive or otherwise, being creative was just me, being bipolar was a trap I got caught up in as a teenager when I had some problems.
i dont have bipolar anymore, but the art bug is still there, kinda proof they have nothing to do with each other except in the minds of people with BP
By: Jane on June 13, 2008
at 9:21 am
Hi Jane, today I had a moment like you. I decided to google bi-polar disease! wow..is putting it mildly. You are my first inquiry. I read your intro and saw your art. That is all right now, I wanted to contact you.
My story is like yours. I healed myself too. Truth be told, I never believed them when they said I had it. I was 20.
I will write you again. We can talk that would be great. I don’t even know where you live yet.
I love in California.
You are so charming in your born again world.
signed,
D
By: Deborah on July 9, 2008
at 6:44 pm
Thanks for your comment,
How exciting! I would love to hear your recovery story Deborah! You can post it here or email me as you see fit, my contact info is on my Home page
Fantastic and well done! Welcome to the club! Bipolar Disorder Recovery is so avant garde in mental health circles, it’s like being a pioneer or a heretic, either will do eh?
You are a trailblazer Deborah, I sure hope to hear from you and I sure hope you blog or vlog
By: Jane on July 9, 2008
at 9:04 pm
