George Harding - Mental Illness - ASSETS

George Harding is another artist who suffered from mental illness and painted images of mental illness.  He quoted that' These paintings are of self portraits, portraits of artists, friends, family and mental health professionals who have guided and helped me through my mental health problems'. He has gone a different route of portraying mental illness, instead of painting these dark and worrying paintings he has decided to show a positive side of mental illness that there are people out there who are willing to help such as friends and family and mental health professionals, quoted again 'The work encourages people to look at ‘us’ in a way that is celebratory, unconventional and can teach us something about different ways of being.' He wants people to see mental illness as something which can get better not something which is looked down upon and something where no one can get better from it, there is always a light at the end of the tunnel.

I like this idea which George Harding has approached and I feel that I would love to approach this kind of thing, by making mental illness into a positive thing and not this scary disease which can't be beat as many people believe this is true. I would like to still focus on someone harming themselves or being depressed but somewhere in the image be it on their arm or the floor or someone in the image positive thinking words such as Hope, Faith, Loving, Caring, Kind, because this is showing good things about a particular individual and its giving others who are suffering a sense of Hope.