I receive the British Journal of Psychiatry each month. The editors “are always looking for interesting and visually appealing images for the cover of the Journal”.
B J Psychiatry 2020, 216(1) cover
I received the January 2020 copy while working on Part 4 of this course “Languages of Light”. The cover has a reproduction of a painting, The Corridor by Jill Chaloner.
Chaloner is described in the Journal as “an East Anglian artist trained at the Norfolk Painting School who previously worked as a Consultant Psychiatrist in the NHS for 20 years”. (B J Psychiatry (2020) 216(1): A2).
She describes the painting:
This painting arose out of memories of working and training in several old asylums, Claybury, Bexley and Warley hospitals among others. Also at the back of my mind was a paper I read in the yellow Journal more than 30 years ago entitled “The Corridor People”. It was a study of patients whose main activity was daily wandering in the main hospital corridor and who were not in receipt of any other “therapy”. It was argued that their seemingly purposeless activity could in fact be part of a healing process. In my picture though the human figures seem to inhabit deep darkness, bright light is never far away hinting at the possibility of transformation.
Like Chaloner, I trained and worked in an old asylum, Bexley Hospital. The subjects of the painting and their situation has a resonance for me. In terms of how Chaloner depicts this, I was struck by the use of bright light and deep shadow. This is not only visually appealing and adds to the interest of the image, but is also here used as a metaphor for chronic mental illness and recovery.
I include this post in my consideration of my assignment as an additional way artists use light – as a metaphor.
Andrew Procter 