Internal States is a departure from some traditional standards of composition and design. It is a series of works in a strident figurative style with an ambivalent, energetic, and brittle emotional tone. It embodies a general lack of concern for pictorial idealisation. It uses, in some works, forms of automatism. This is a method of artmaking in which the artist suppresses conscious control over the making process, allowing the unconscious mind to have great sway. There is a use of vivid but jarringly colourful harmonies in dribs and scribbles, with a simultaneously tense and playful presentation of figures in a primitive style.All communicating a sense of inner disturbance, emotional tension, and alienation.This body of work is a candid illustration of some of the workings of the artist’s psyche. Inspired by artists as diverse as Edvard Munch, Jean Dubuffet and Jean Michel Basquiat, the works capture a particular moment in time, a particular state of mind.

‍

Painting from the inside out, on advice, to cope with a period of hypermania, allowing his subconscious to dictate what takes place when hands meet materials.

Expressionism? Certainly, as the distorted realities make the works expressive of his feelings and thoughts.

Art Brut? Powerfully original, they are very raw in aesthetic appearance.

Outsider art? Only in that they resist tidy boundaries; that they sit outside the artist’s usual style; that they were made as art therapy by someone suffering from a mental health condition.

As one of the many friends and advisors called on to give an opinion of this body of work once finished, I was certain that they should be kept, that they should be shown.It’s not often that you get to see, so graphically displayed, an individual’s experience of this mental health condition.One which has been/is suffered by so many worldwide including some well-known figures e.g. Beethoven, IsaacNewton, Van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Winston Churchill,Ernest Hemingway, Nina Simone, Marilyn Monroe, Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain. Bringing it out of the closet and onto the gallery’s walls and into the mainstream media, as has been done by some, allows for more general acknowledgement, understanding and discussion. Knowing that high-achieving heroes have been sufferers helpedMatt accept his condition and realise the need for control, especially having witnessed out of control episodes by the likes of Kanye West and Britney Spears.

Angels called Icarus drown when attempting to flyIn the melting pot of where Boys turn into men

Surrounding the maelstrom of emotion and disturbance that Internal States presents is a wider world of concern, anxiety, frustration, anger, hopelessness, and defeat felt by the watchers in the sufferer’s universe. That faith, hope and love prevail for most says something of the value placed on the heart and mind at risk. The balancing act between despair and hope performed on the stage of destruction, loss and fear is only able to be maintained because love persists, and support and help is available and embraced.During 2018 and 2019 the artist experienced multiple episodes of psychosis that eventually led to a diagnosis of bi-polar and suitable treatment and support. In his poem, written in late 2018, he speaks of factors contributing to his escalating distress.

‍

Sharon Tassicker with Matthew McVeigh

‍

I’m living a quiet kind of cold war

That has fallen on deaf ears.

Generations lost to the partisan of white Nations

My vision of cloudy cataracts

Became the first point of attack

Sunlight turned to cancer

I’ve done all my best to smile

But I’m paralysed still wanting life’s answers.

A float my shipless oceans

Puzzled like newborn eyes

Amongst its tides and breakers

Sleep has become the cousin of death

Where my dreams lie and take their last breath

My vocals in a choke hold

New burdens succeed as former ones grow old

The prime directive to play the part of utter

psychosis

not prone to play stationary man hopeless

Feeling thorns of my own life roses

Sleep in micro doses

A vicious symbiosis

Insanity prognosis

Discovering the long lost art of living whilst

dying

Angels called Icarus drown whilst attempting

flying

In the melting pot of where

Boys turn into men.

As enemies become their life lesson friends.

Everything happens for no reason

Nothing gets you anywhere

But everything gets you somewhere

And I was born two feet trying to run bare

This is life and living it with flare.

‍

By Matthew McVeigh

‍