Puppet Schizophrene
Oil on Canvas, 31 x 40 ins. 1988
In 1988 Bryan Charnley wrote “I found myself on an interior journey in which landscape and subject were subsumed to inner vision. This lead to the large bondaged heads…..in the bondage pictures I am suggesting that schizophrenia is a form of bondage which blinds us to realty. The schizophrene to some extent must tell himself that what is coming at him is not real, hence he must bondage what is supposed to be the truth. The drugs and their effects are a form of bondage. Also the other associations of bondage such as submission, blindness, subjugation, privation repression and deviation linked to sexuality make it an appropriate symbol. All these are drawn into the schizophrenic experience as the illness takes over.
