Clockwise from upper left: Works by Hanna Bruer, Jeanie McNeel, Angela McCorm and Kelly Lingen Mahieu.
Hanna Bruer has lived with mental health issues for as long as she can remember. When she was younger, she dealt with depression, anxiety and an eating disorder. Then in 2013, she was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, a condition marked by impulsivity and a tendency to self-harm.
Bruer is not alone. Approximately one in five people in the U.S. — 43.7 million — experience mental illness, including depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder and schizophrenia.
Throughout her challenges, Bruer has found comfort in making art. “Painting is the most effective way I’ve found of dealing with my demons,” she says. “It helps calm me.”
Bruer’s work, along with pieces from 40 other artists, will be featured in the 9th Annual Healing Art Show sponsored by the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), which opens Thursday, Oct. 1, at VSA Wisconsin and runs through November.
The exhibit includes paintings, drawings, collages and table pieces from Wisconsin artists with diagnoses of schizophrenia, depression, PTSD and ADD. It is co-sponsored by the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art and kicks off Mental Illness Awareness Week, which starts Oct. 4.
Bruer’s piece is an abstract mixed-media work called “Fear and Affectation.” It features obscured words, scrawled in cursive across the canvas. “They are things I need to say, but I’m not always sure I want people to read them,” Bruer says. “It was a difficult piece for me to create because it reveals how full of fear I am despite what I present to the world.”
Some of the artists, including Bruer, studied art in college or make art professionally, while others use art primarily as a therapy tool or a hobby.
“We hope that people that see the show will let go of their predisposition that mental illness is scary or as something you need to cover up,” says Colleen Rooney, events coordinator for NAMI. “We want to decrease that stigma.”
NAMI 9th Annual Healing Art Show
Gallery Night Opening Reception: Friday, Oct. 2, 5-9 pm, VSA Wisconsin, 1709 Aberg Ave., Suite 1
