Giving his day a point
22 November, 2010 Painting has given artist and former broadcaster James King a reason to get up, to do something instead of just sitting down in front of the TV.
“It has given my day a point.”
He is one of more than 130 people who attend classes at Auckland’s Toi Ora Live Art Trust, set up in 1995 as a consumer-driven community arts centre for people with experience living with mental illness.
James only took up painting after he was diagnosed with depression in 2007.
He recently held his first solo exhibition, ‘Love Letter Bomb’ at Toi Ora’s gallery in Grey Lynn.
His work is charged with humour and wit, naked sarcasm and emotion. Prominent themes include politics, society, the place of the individual, freedom of speech and psychological warfare.
The most human of organisations
“I now realise how beneficial painting has been. Toi Ora has been a great place for me. It is a very social, non-judgmental place. It is the most human of organisations.”
James’ advice to others experiencing mental illness is to “take up something that isn’t too challenging, that takes you out of the self-indulgent nature of your illness”.
As well as painting, he walks the neighbour’s dog, helps children read, visits family.
He was happy with his first exhibition -- a series of paintings describing the mood of the world occupied by a faceless, nameless individual at the margins of life.
Now he is working towards a second exhibition scheduled for the Satellite Gallery in Newton in February.
He is being careful to set short-term living-in-the-moment goals, “concentrating on what is in front of me”.