Drawing Mental Illness: Artist Bobby Baker’s Visual Diary

Harvesting the daily flow of consciousness, or what group therapy has to do with marine life.

Despite our proudest cultural and medical advances, mental illness remains largely taboo, partly because the experience of it can be so challenging to articulate. But when performance artist Bobby Baker was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder in 1996, followed by a breast cancer diagnosis, she set out to capture her experience and her journey to recovery in 711 drawings that would serve as her private catharsis over the course of more than a decade. In Diary Drawings: Mental Illness and Me, Baker makes, at long last, this private experience public through 158 drawings and watercolors — poignant, honest, funny, moving, shocking — spanning 11 years of mental, physical, and emotional healing, a journey Marina Warner aptly calls in the preface a “chronicle of a life repaired.” The book is at once a personal journal and a tenacious thesaurus that helps translate the misunderstood realities of mental illness into an expressive and intuitive visual language the rest of the world can understand, reminiscent of the wonderful Drawing Autism.

I think mental illness is the worst of anything. The hierarchy of suffering is sort of bound into our society. But my personal experience is that the isolation and anguish of severe mental illness was much worse than…having something physical that people could understand better.” ~ Bobby Baker

From how the tears flow into her ears when she does yoga (Day 320) to the weight gain side effects of medication (Day 397) to the uplifting “butterflies of academia” (Day 579) to the strain of chemo (Day 698), Baker’s illustrated micro-narratives are startlingly raw, yet incredibly eloquent and layered.

Day 303

Day 320

Day 397

Day 470

Day 526

Day 579

Day 690

Day 698

The sequence of the drawings follows the artist’s painful but, ultimately, triumphant recovery, with the last stretch of pictures exuding a kind of cathartic exhale, a “huge, happy, light-headed relief,” as Warner puts it. Baker’s favorite drawing is from Day 771, titled “The Daily Flow of Consciousness,” which she believes represents her current state:

Day 771

The Guardian has a wonderful audio slideshow of Baker’s work, narrated by the artist herself.

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Situations Matter: How Context Shapes Our Lives

Debunking the myth of character, or what sitcoms have to do with the mysteries of personality.

“What matters most is how well you walk through the fire,” Charles Bukowski famously wrote. We walk through life and its fires along narrative paths that define who we are and what our personalities are like. We speak of the “architecture” of character as if it were as rigid and unmoving as a building. We often perceive others as sitcom characters — static and unchanging from episode to episode. Yet ordinary contexts, from where we are to what we see around us to who else is with us, influence and transform how we behave and what character traits we exhibit — who we appear to be. Coming to terms with this idea, argues Tufts University psychologist Sam Sommers in Situations Matter: Understanding How Context Transforms Your World, gives us a more profound understanding of not only ourselves but also the people in our lives and the complex interpersonal dynamics that underpin our world.

We’re easily seduced by the notion of stable character. So much of who we are, how we think, and what we do is driven by the situations we’re in, yet we remain blissfully unaware of it.” ~ Sam Sommers

For the ultimate cherry on top, especially for fellow lovers of book trailers, here is a wonderful pictogram- and typography-driven motion graphics teaser for the book:

From why “personality” is a myth (cue in Julian Baggini’s The Ego Trick) to how “character” fluctuates (cue in David DeSteno and Piercarlo Valdesolo’s Out of Character) to a multitude of other psychological biases and misconceptions that cloud our interpretation of reality (cue in David McRaney’s You Are Not So Smart), Sommers fuses cognitive science with sociology and witty observation to pull into question what personhood means (cue in Christian Smith’s What Is a Person?) and illuminate the puppeteering power of situations over our lives.

Though uncomfortable and dissonant with our self-perception as independent individuals acting, rather than reacting, under our own volition, the eye-opening insight into these influences offers a new way of relating to and navigating everything from workplace dynamics to romantic relationships to self-actualization — what Sommers calls “both the mundane and the sublime aspects of our social world.”

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Advice to Sink in Slowly: Designers Share Wisdom with First-Year Students in Poster Series

Unpacking the secrets of happiness and creativity one poster at a time.

What better way to kick off the new year than with words of wisdom from those who have threaded before us? That’s precisely the premise of advice to sink in slowly, a wonderful project enlisting design graduates in passing on advice and inspiration to first-year students through an ongoing series of posters — part Live Now, part Everything Is Going To Be OK, part Wisdom, part something completely refreshing, based on the idea that we all have subjective wisdom we wish we’d known earlier, but often don’t get a chance to pass it on to those who can benefit from it in a way that makes them pay heed.

Advice is subjective. But, by passing on advice in a creative way, it is possible to create something that lasts, that people will want to live with and which can let the advice sink in slowly and help out later on.”

'to create ideas is a gift, but to choose wisely is a skill' by Ryan Morgan

'Do what you love' by Andy J. Miller

'Take Time' by Temujin Doran

'Use your library…you'll miss it when you leave' by Rebecca Cobb

'Finish what you start* *it may seem insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.' by Irina Troitskaya

'Ignore both of them' by Eleni Kalorkoti

'Go and look outside' by Robert Evans

'You have to leave your room to get there' by Ben Javens

'if in doubt, make tea' by Owen Davey

'trust your gut instincts' by Carys Williams

'Don't be afraid, everything will be alright' by Ben Javens

'collaborate' by Simon Vince

'Believe in the marks that you will make' by Stephie Ginger

'how to make friends in your first term' by Temujin Doran

'eat breakfast' by Always With Honor

'Be free!' by Anna-Kaisa

'don't keep your worries to yourself' Rebecca Cobb

'Find some place to stop & be quiet' by Lizzy Stewart

'everything is possible' by Lee Basford

Free posters are available to first-year students across the U.K. upon request. Four of the posters are available for purchase in a fundraising effort, with 100% of the proceeds feeding back to support this wonderful project — so go ahead and grab one, then let its wisdom sink in slowly.

In 2011, bringing you Brain Pickings took more than 5,000 hours. If you found any joy and stimulation here last year, please consider a modest donation.

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