Bryan Charnley was born in 1949 in Stockton-on-Tees, alongside his twin brother. His life would later turn into one of the most extraordinary artistic diaries of schizophrenia.
He grew up in Kent, Cranfield, and Bedford, where his father worked as a lecturer. From a young age, he showed interest in drawing and painting.
At eighteen, he suffered a nervous breakdown. Doctors later diagnosed him with acute schizophrenia. Even through this, he secured a place at Leicester School of Art in 1968.
A year later, he enrolled at Central School of Art and Design in London. Another breakdown interrupted his studies, forcing him into cycles of hospitalisation and treatment.
Electroconvulsive therapy and heavy medication marked much of his early adulthood. From 1971 to 1977, he lived with his parents, painting whenever his condition allowed him to work.
In 1978, Charnley moved to Bedford. He began painting more consistently, starting with photorealistic works, often flowers, which reflected both discipline and a search for clarity.
By the 1980s, his attention shifted inward. His art no longer stopped at surface likeness but explored the inner visions of schizophrenia, translating them into symbolic compositions.
These explorations would culminate in his final and most haunting body of work: the Self Portrait Series, painted as he reduced his medication in 1991.
Early Artistic Journey and Relationship with Pam Jones
In the late 1970s, Charnley’s work drew from photorealism, a style popular in America at the time. He painted large, meticulous flowers that carried both precision and intensity.
His early paintings stood apart from the conceptual art dominating London galleries. He admired Bridget Riley, whose work combined emotional charge with strict visual control.
By 1982, Charnley created a double portrait of himself and his partner, Pam Jones. Critics later described it as the peak of his early photorealistic period.
The painting revealed his fascination with David Hockney’s methods. Like Hockney, Charnley used clean lines and intimate settings to balance realism with an undercurrent of personal narrative.
Pam struggled with her own mental health. In 1987, she attempted suicide by leaping from a window, surviving but with permanent damage to her spine.
The event devastated Charnley. That same year, he painted Leaving by the Window, capturing both trauma and loss through sharp imagery. The work marked a turning point in his art.
From this period forward, his paintings became more symbolic, shifting from strict realism to inner landscapes filled with metaphor, dream imagery, and psychological weight.
His influences expanded to Freud’s theories on dreams. He developed a vocabulary of visual symbols to represent paranoia, fear, and fractured identity.
Bethlem Royal Hospital acquired four of his paintings in 1984. He also studied William Kurelek and Louis Wain, artists whose work reflected powerful, personal visions of mental illness.
By the late 1980s, Charnley exhibited solo at the Dryden Street Gallery in Covent Garden and joined the Visions show at the Royal College of Art.
Despite recognition, he faced constant barriers: heavy medication, recurring symptoms, and the difficulty of living as a working artist with schizophrenia.
This tension pushed him toward his last project. In 1991, he turned his canvas entirely on himself, beginning the Self Portrait Series.
Self Portrait Series
April 11–16, 1991
The first portrait feels steady. Charnley painted a conventional likeness over two sittings. His face appears clear, familiar, still recognisable to himself.
At this stage, he remained on regular medication: Depixol and Tryptisol. The drugs left him drowsy, slowing his days and softening the sharp edges of thought.
The painting works as a baseline. It shows him in balance, though muted. His brush holds order. His self-image stays whole, unfractured, firmly anchored in routine.
April 20, 1991
Only days later, the change is dramatic. He cut down to one Depixol tablet. Paranoia rushed in, reshaping both his body and his brush.
In this portrait, one ear stretches like a rabbit’s. He felt hypersensitive to voices, convinced people upstairs could read and echo his thoughts.
He described it as “ego crucifixion,” a torment of exposure. Every vibration felt magnified. His skin no longer shielded him. The painting echoes this raw vulnerability.
April 23, 1991
Here the lines break down. His brush loses the discipline of photorealism and slides into graffiti-like scrawls. Concentration dissolved as the drug’s grip loosened.
Crosses cover his eyes and mouth. He wrote that he felt blind to others’ perceptions and mute in a world alive with extra-sensory communication.
The date itself becomes obsessive. He crossed out and rewrote it, evidence of an anxious mind spiraling under withdrawal. His likeness is slipping further from reach.
April 24, 1991
Painted the very next day, this portrait bears blood. He pricked his thumb and pressed it into the canvas, a direct mark of pain.
The head is eyeless, the mouth sewn. Horns of “ESP” sprout, twisted into mouths. Smoke curls from a pipe, hinting at his compulsive smoking.
His diary admits he could not last long like this. The painting shows complete disintegration, brutal and unflinching. The body becomes both symbol and wound.
April 29, 1991
Charnley painted this portrait while tormented by obsessive thoughts and long walks. He felt forces warning him against smoking, which only worsened his anxiety.
In desperation, he swallowed large amounts of Depixol tablets, hoping they would silence the pressure. The drugs had no effect.
A phone call from his twin brother finally gave him relief. He described the words as a breakthrough, stronger than anything medication provided.
He added the phrase “Love is Strange” to the canvas. It reflected both his personal struggle and his belief that truth held healing power.
May 2, 1991
This portrait shows his collapse into exhaustion. The drugs left him drained of energy, unable to work with his usual control.
He compared himself to a pupa, stuck in a stage of stillness. A bird symbolised his spirit, crushed by a maggot.
Other images crowd the canvas: a man with two heads, dirty laundry on display, and a hooded phallus pointing to deep conflicts.
He explained that every thought felt exposed, as though his private struggles were hanging in public. The painting reflects total fatigue.
May 6, 1991
In this portrait, nails pierce his mouth and eyes. He described himself as blind and unable to speak.
He felt mocked by people around him, especially women, and believed he carried guilt for past actions. His psychiatrist advised distance from relationships.
The painting reflects this sense of being punished. His likeness becomes a target for judgment.
He captured his isolation directly. The nailed mouth and eyes reduce him to silence and powerlessness.
May 14, 1991
This portrait shows his ego breaking apart like a cell dividing. He described it as being torn apart under constant attack.
A Roman soldier’s leg appears in the painting. He connected it to his fear of the Mafia and his feelings about organised violence.
He also linked it to Italy, saying he once hurt someone without knowing the social rules. That memory haunted him and deepened his anxiety.
He wrote that he felt completely defeated. The painting reflects humiliation, surrender, and the belief that he could not escape this cycle.
May 18, 1991
Charnley reduced his antidepressants around this time. The change left him sleeping less and feeling exposed to uncontrollable thought broadcasting.
In the painting, his brain turns into a giant mouth. He described it as acting on its own, sending his thoughts into the world.
He painted a mass of gore near the heart. He explained it as the pain of a broken heart feeding his condition.
The nail in his mouth reappears. He felt socially cut off and convinced he was giving off powerful, unwanted signals.
May 23, 1991
By this portrait, he grew tired of explaining his work. He felt people misunderstood his use of simple, symbolic imagery.
The canvas is filled with blue, which he said reflected depression from cutting back on antidepressants. He saw it as a mood colour.
Once again, his brain is painted as a mouth. He believed it represented thought broadcasting in the clearest way possible.
He feared radio and television were linked to his mind. He described feeling humiliated when others seemed to respond to his private thoughts.
May 24, 1991
Charnley painted this portrait around the theme of heartbreak. He said the pain felt physical, and he placed it on the left side of the canvas.
On the right side, spiders’ legs stretch out from his head. He explained them as symbols of his inhibitions and the fear of his thoughts being exposed.
The image feels sharp and unsettling. It shows how close he believed he was to a deeper and more dangerous stage of schizophrenia.
He had also reduced his medication further. By then, he was taking one and a half tablets of Depixol and one antidepressant.
June 8, 1991
The spiders’ legs return, this time radiating from his brain. He found some comfort in imagining them weakening as they stretched further out.
He also painted flaming darts, piercing thoughts the moment they formed. For him, it was a way of showing how outside voices attacked his mind.
White sections on the canvas represent thoughts themselves. He painted them meeting in the center, only to be disrupted at once.
He asked himself in his diary if this was the truth of his illness. The painting became his way of testing that idea.
June 13, 1991
This portrait carries both anger and despair. He wrote about people gossiping, reminding him of his past, while he knew nothing of theirs.
The head in the painting looks emptied, like two hollow eggs. He described it as if his private thoughts had been eaten away.
He included Van Gogh’s crows from Wheatfield with Crows. For him, the image carried the same connection to suicidal thoughts.
He also painted horns shaped like mouths. He linked them to voices and ESP, mocking him and feeding his paranoia.
June 19, 1991
This portrait is simpler than earlier ones. He painted himself with a nailed mouth and tongue tied, showing silence and helplessness.
He described people intruding into his private world. He felt like everyone had a foot in the door of his mind.
There is no elaborate symbolism here. The focus stays on his inability to respond.
The painting reflects exhaustion. By this point, he seemed to conserve his energy for a direct image of his condition.
June 27, 1991
This portrait is one of the most complex in the series. Charnley described it as an attempt to capture the core of his schizophrenia.
He painted himself transparent, with his brain nailed in place. He compared it to Christ nailed on the cross.
A red beast appears, muzzled but straining with anger. He explained that fear of this anger was driving his hallucinations.
He also painted eyebrows bent upward, ending in mouths. He believed his senses were being warped by fear, creating visions of ESP and voices.
July 12, 1991
This portrait includes written text across the canvas. Charnley used a line from Bob Dylan: “The cards are no good that I’m holding unless they are from another world.”
The words suggest defeat and distance from reality. He believed his chances only made sense in another dimension.
The colours red and yellow dominate the image. He often linked these colours with acute pain and mental strain.
It feels like a farewell in both tone and content. The Dylan lyric points outward, beyond the world he knew.
July 19, 1991
This was his last painting. No diary notes accompany it. The canvas was still on the easel in his studio the day he died.
Once again, red and yellow fill the portrait. He had used them before to express the sharpest anguish.
The face looks stripped down, simplified, raw. It marks the end of his series and of his effort to document his illness.
That same day, Bryan Charnley took his life. The portrait remains his final record, a stark image of his last hours.
Legacy and Exhibitions
After his death in 1991, Charnley’s Self Portrait Series gained recognition. In 1995, the National Portrait Gallery exhibited the full set in London.
Viewers saw not only paintings but also his diaries, which explained each stage of his withdrawal from medication. Together, they formed a unique record.
Later exhibitions followed. Bethlem Museum of the Mind showcased his work in 2015, connecting it to the wider history of art and mental illness.
In 2018, the Wellcome Collection acquired thirty of his paintings. Fifteen were from the Self Portrait Series, ensuring their preservation for research and public viewing.
Charnley’s paintings continue to stand out for their honesty. They give viewers direct access to the daily reality of schizophrenia without filters or interpretation.
For many, the series shows more than illness. It reveals determination, creativity, and the struggle to hold onto identity in the face of unrelenting symptoms.
Today, Bryan Charnley’s work remains both haunting and instructive. His portraits live on as a rare dialogue between art and inner experience.
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