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Leigh On Sea News: Mental Health Warrior – AN exhibition currently on in Leigh features a variety of portraiture and local scenes by artist and musician Austin Butler.
Mental Health Warrior - AN exhibition currently on in Leigh features a variety of portraiture and local scenes by artist and musician Austin Butler.
AN exhibition currently on in Leigh features a variety of portraiture and local scenes by artist and musician Austin Butler.
Mr Butler’s collection of portraits and landscapes in paint and pencil– originally planned for 2020, but cancelled due to lockdown – now serves as both a testament to his artistic skill and a reflection of his personal journey with mental health.
Many of the portraits in the exhibit feature people that Austin became friends with whilst being a patient at Basildon hospital in 2019.
Mr Butler, who is autistic, is currently pursuing a BSc in Creative Computer Technology and programming, and is dubbed a “Mental Health Warrior” by his mother and carer, author Isabel Bee.
Isabel, who is also an artist, highlights the immense challenges he has faced: “Austin’s life has been tremendously difficult,” she said.
“We wanted to highlight the worth and talent of a person with Autism and the associated Mental Health symptoms that often present alongside.”
Key for Ms Bee and Mr Butler is highlighting the deaths of people who have been patients under local NHS mental health services.
Ms Bee says: “We are standing with the current Lampard Statutory Public Enquiry into over 2,000 deaths of our most vulnerable members of Society under Essex Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust (EPUT).”
One work in the exhibition is of Chris Nota, a teenager from Southend, who sadly took his own life aged 19 by jumping off the bridge at Queensway
Ms Bee adds: “His death and many others could so easily have been avoided.”
The exhibition is hosted by the Leigh Community Centre, welcoming visitors from Monday to Friday, 9 am to 5 pm (closing at 4:30 pm on Fridays) until May 24.
Full colour catalogues of the work are also available.
Picture: Austin with this work at Leigh Community Centre/ Pic Isobel Butler
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