Website pages — Poor Tom

Poor Tom & Dark of The Mind 2024-2025

I constructed a papier-mâché head, painted to resemble my own. Its construction is intended to be as though it was found in the back of a prop department of an abandoned theatre. During this process I reflected heavily on my own mental health issues. A decomposing prop, falling apart and struggling to hold on to life, with a deep rooted light beaming from the skull of a borderline schizophrenic. The sculpture, titled “Poor Tom” is a reflection of my mental health issues and the intense struggles of daily life.

The sculptures relation to my Essex project is within its relation to me. Poor Tom being a manifestation of my own mental health and the uncanny formation of its painting gives way to a slight misaligned view of my observations of the world around me. I feel as though I am this uncanny creature that sways with the slightest wind, a person walking by will cause him to move as though it is possessed or perhaps haunted. The piece being titled Poor Tom is a reference to the character Poor Tom from Shakespeares’ King Lear. The sculpture is seen to be falling apart and broken, a decaying relic of the past, with vaudevillian aesthetics and a simple colour palette the sculpture is reminiscent of the past.

This photograph is a reflection of my mental health, it was intended to be paired with Poor Tom however its formal realisation was not until a few months later. This photograph is of me, in my garden topless, starring into a void of foliage, the apricot blossoms hang sparingly across the tree, their pinks and whites give the eye direction from the pale white body towards the flowers and further into darkness. I increased the saturation of colours to give the image a more vibrant colour story. The intensity of the greens gives the image a visual of something being not quite right, being lit with only a solitary, cold spotlight the blackness of shadows at there foot of the image give the idea of a floating island.

This image encapsulates the ideas of a void and the essence of my mental health. I have found over the years the state of my psychoses worsening. I have found myself having visual hallucinations more often, these come in the form of a white ghost like entity I have called The Fae Thing, she is harmless and not a creature of malice and The Witch, another manifestation of my schizophrenia. The Witch is a woman whose form is such a deep shade of black that when she sits outside my bedroom window at night you can’t see her, but she is there. She is the figure in the void I am starring at and The Fae Thing stands behind me also terrified of The Witch.