Mary Barnes
Encyclopedia
Portsmouth
Portsmouth is the second largest city in the ceremonial county of Hampshire on the south coast of England. Portsmouth is notable for being the United Kingdom's only island city; it is located mainly on Portsea Island...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
– 29 June 2001 in Tomintoul
Tomintoul
Tomintoul is a village in the Moray council area of Scotland; until 1975 it was located in the county of Banffshire.It is said to be the highest village in the Scottish Highlands, but at is still significantly lower than the highest village in Scotland .The village was laid out on a grid pattern...
, Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
) was an English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
artist and writer who suffered from schizophrenia
Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by a disintegration of thought processes and of emotional responsiveness. It most commonly manifests itself as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking, and it is accompanied by significant social...
but recovered to become a successful painter. She is particularly known for her documentation of her experience at R.D. Laing
Ronald David Laing
Ronald David Laing was a Scottish psychiatrist who wrote extensively on mental illnessin particular, the experience of psychosis...
's experimental therapeutic community
Therapeutic community
Therapeutic community is a term applied to a participative, group-based approach to long-term mental illness, personality disorders and drug addiction...
at Kingsley Hall
Kingsley Hall
Kingsley Hall is a community centre in the East End of London. It dates back to the work of Doris Lester and Muriel Lester, who had a nursery school in nearby Bruce Road. Their brother, Kingsley Lester, died aged 26 in 1914, leaving money for work in the local area for "educational, social and...
, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
.
Life
Mary Barnes trained as a nurse and joined the army in World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. She worked in Frankfurt
Frankfurt
Frankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2010 population of 688,249. The urban area had an estimated population of 2,300,000 in 2010...
for two years before returning to London as a full time nurse.
Therapy
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 regressionRegression (psychology)
Regression, according to psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, is a defense mechanism leading to the temporary or long-term reversion of the ego to an earlier stage of development rather than handling unacceptable impulses in a more adult way...
therapy. During the process, she discovered a talent for art
Art
Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....
. She would later be described as "an ambassador for Laing" emerging from her journey to co-author a book about it with Joseph Berke
Joseph Berke
-Early years:He studied at Columbia College of Columbia University and graduated from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. He moved to London in 1965 where Berke worked with R. D...
, the resident psychiatrist who helped her.
Her works, vivid oils
Oil painting
Oil painting is the process of painting with pigments that are bound with a medium of drying oil—especially in early modern Europe, linseed oil. Often an oil such as linseed was boiled with a resin such as pine resin or even frankincense; these were called 'varnishes' and were prized for their body...
often depicting religious themes - were first shown at the Camden Arts Centre
Camden Arts Centre
Camden Arts Centre is a contemporary visual art gallery, dedicated to engaging living artists from across the world. Positioning the artist at the centre of the programme, Camden Arts Centre strives to involve the public in the ideas and work of today's artists.The exhibition and education...
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
David Edgar (playwright)
David Edgar is a British playwright and author who has had more than sixty of his plays published and performed on stage, radio and television around the world, making him one of the most prolific dramatists of the post-1960s generation in Great Britain.He was resident playwright at the Birmingham...
.
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
Tomintoul
Tomintoul is a village in the Moray council area of Scotland; until 1975 it was located in the county of Banffshire.It is said to be the highest village in the Scottish Highlands, but at is still significantly lower than the highest village in Scotland .The village was laid out on a grid pattern...
, where she died in 2001.
In 2010 a major retrospective exhibition of Barnes' work opened at SPACE
SPACE
The term SPACE can refer to:* SPACE, a Canadian science-fiction channel* The Society for Promotion of Alternative Computing and Employment* DSPACE, a term in computational complexity theory...
in London.
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 BooksFree Association BooksFree Association Books is an innovative project started in 1980s London. It arose as the brainchild of Bob Young and colleagues, who, disillusioned by the decline of the liberatory movement, began a search using psychoanalysis to understand the problems of liberation...
, 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 BerkeJoseph Berke-Early years:He studied at Columbia College of Columbia University and graduated from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. He moved to London in 1965 where Berke worked with R. D...
, published by Free Association Books, ISBN 1-85343-125-7 (paperback) - Two Accounts of a Journey Through Madness (2002) with Joseph BerkeJoseph Berke-Early years:He studied at Columbia College of Columbia University and graduated from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. He moved to London in 1965 where Berke worked with R. D...
, published by The Other Press, ISBN 1-59051-016-X (hardback)
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"