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Detail from a Mary Barnes painting

Mary Edith Barnes (9 February 1923 in Portsmouth, England – 29 June 2001 in Tomintoul, Scotland) was an English artist and writer who suffered from schizophrenia but recovered to become a successful painter. She is particularly known for her documentation of her experience at RD Laing's experimental therapeutic community at Kingsley Hall, London.

Biography

Mary Barnes trained as a nurse and joined the army in World War II as a nursing sister, in 1945 working a year in Egypt and Palestine before returning to London.

She had her first breakdown in 1952, when she was diagnosed with schizophrenia at St Bernard's Hospital, Hanwell. Discharged after a year, she returned to work as a nursing tutor. As a devout Catholic, she planned to study nursing at the The Catholic University of America, Washington, but was refused a USA visa on grounds of mental history. Over the next decade, her mental state deteriorated; she spent time living in a Richmond Fellowship hostel and for a few months at a Carmelite convent.

In 1963, after reading Laing's book, The Divided Self, she contacted him and began therapy, which intensified when she entered Kingsley Hall in 1965 and underwent regression therapy. During the process, she discovered a talent for art. She would later be described as "an ambassador for Laing" emerging from her journey to co-author a book about it with Joseph Berke, the resident psychiatrist who helped her.

Her works, vivid oils often depicting religious themes - were first shown at the Camden Arts Centre in 1969. She subsequently became a respected artist, painting evocative works based on her experiences and showing her work on tour worldwide, accompanying it with talks on her experiences and mental health. In 1979 a play was produced, with script by Barnes with David Edgar.

In 1985, she moved to Scotland. Something Sacred, her book of conversations, writings and paintings, was published in 1989. In 1993, she moved to Tomintoul, where she died in 2001.

Publications

• Mary Barnes (play) with David Edgar (1979), published by Methuen Publishing Ltd ISBN 0-413-40070-0
• Something Sacred: Conversations, Writings, Paintings (1989) with Ann Scott, published by Free Association Books, ISBN 1-85343-101-X (hardcover)
• Something Sacred: Conversations, Writings, Paintings (1989) with Ann Scott, published by Free Association Books, ISBN 1-85343-100-1 (paperback)
• Two Accounts of a Journey Through Madness (1991) with Joseph Berke, published by Free Association Books, ISBN 1-85343-125-7 (paperback)
• Two Accounts of a Journey Through Madness (2002) with Joseph Berke, published by The Other Press, ISBN 1-59051-016-X (hardback)

References

• Mary Barnes - Obituary, The Times, London, July 9, 2001
• Mary Barnes: Gifted artist who documented her struggle with mental illness in paint and print, The Guardian, London, July 13, 2001

External links

• Book Review - Mary Barnes
• Mary Barnes, tribute site to "Nurse, Madwoman, Explorer of the Underworld, Celebrant of Death and Rebirth Member of Kingsley Hall Community, Artist, Writer, Healer, Catholic mystic, Visionary"

Wikipedia content modification information:

• This page was last modified on 16 October 2008, at 12:29.

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