'The Artist and Mental Illness' from The Cunningham Dax Collection and The Artists of Neami Splash Art Studio Exhibition Catalogue, Bundoora Homestead Art Centre, Bundoora

Deposited with permission of the Bundoora Homestead Art CentreImages produced by people experiencing mental illness can be difficult to look at. Whenever I see the distorted , open-mouthed figure in Edvard Munch's The Scream of 1893, for example, I feel an uncanny sense of altered reality, that the world could suddenly turn inside out and reveal some awful truth underlying everyday perception. With this work the Norwegian-born Munch, a professionally trained artist who at various times in his life suffered from depression and psychosis , created an image which has become a modern icon of mental anguish. At the same time, throughout his career Munch produced a broad range of works, including an extraordinary series of ful length portraits in which the artist's experience of mental illness plays no obvious part. Although these latter works are rarely noted in the literature on Munch, they highlight an important point about the relationship between art and mental health: not everything produced by artists who have experienced mental illness can be related to their medical condition. Furthermore, not even every aspect of a work such as The Scream can be attributed to the creator's inner psychological state. Indeed, when art works such as Munch's become the subject of art historical enquiry they are approached from a broad range of perspectives, including the technical , social, historical, as well as the psychological and medical. In viewing images produced by people experiencing difficulties with mental health, such as those held in The Cunningham Dax Collection or those produced at Neami Splash Art Studio, I argue that we should adopt a similarly broad approach, while not losing sight of the pain and suffering that often accompanies the onset of mental illness