© 2002 The Royal College of Psychiatrists
Psychiatry in pictures |
Psychiatry in pictures
Mind Odyssey is a celebration of the arts, psychiatry and the mind. For further information see http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/campaigns/2001/ or e-mail: awedderburn{at}rcpsych.ac.uk
Cynthia Weldon, a graduate of Camberwell College of Art, developed a
devastating bipolar illness at the age of 16 and was first admitted to St
Bernard's Hospital, Southall, in 1961. During the next decade of her life she
made several suicide attempts and had frequent admissions to St Bernard's
where she was treated with antipsychotics and electroconvulsive therapy. In
May 1973 she was admitted to Bexley Hospital and it was while she was nursed
on the locked or longer-stay wards of this institution that she produced some
of her most haunting images. Britta von Zweigbergk, Cynthia's art therapist,
became the unofficial ‘keeper’ of her drawings and paintings.
Writing in 1999, von Zweigbergk explained that she began to see Cynthia as
being like a war correspondent reporting from the war-torn battlefield of her
experience of severe mental illness. ‘Her drawings and paintings were
her dispatches often sent in a hurry with scant regard for personal safety,
the Art Therapy Department acting as a base from which her materials were
supplied’. In her pictures, Cynthia portrayed scenes from the daily life
of the hospital, of her own suffering and that of other patients with great
simplicity and feeling. Sometimes the choice of subject matter reflected
touching and ordinary moments during periods of relative tranquillity such as
the picture of one of the feral cats that roamed the hospital. In July 1977
she killed herself by cutting her throat while von Zweigbergk was on holiday
and took care to choose a time when her friend the charge nurse Brian O'Connor
was not on duty on the ward. Writing (again in 1999) O'Connor recalled,
‘When I was notified, I did not grieve, I felt relieved that for Cyn,
who was always tormented by depression and her other thoughts, her tortured
life was over’. These and other pictures by Cynthia Weldon can be seen
at the Bethlem Royal Hospital Archives and Museum (telephone 020 8776
4227).
,
,
 View larger version (128K): [in a new window] [as a PowerPoint slide] |
Cynthia Weldon (née Pell), 1933-1977: Going to
Shenley
|
 View larger version (125K): [in a new window] [as a PowerPoint slide] |
Cynthia Weldon (née Pell), 1933-1977: By
Moonlight
|
 View larger version (149K): [in a new window] [as a PowerPoint slide] |
Cynthia Weldon (née Pell), 1933-1977: Cat with Spilt
Sack
|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||