Bryan Charnley

Bryan Charnley (1949–1991) was a British artist whose work explored his experience of schizophrenia.

He is best known for his series of self-portraits painted while reducing his prescribed medication over a series of weeks, which culminated in his death by suicide.

Bryan Charnley was born on 20 September 1949 in Stockton on Tees, one of twins. During his childhood, he lived with his brother and parents in South London, in Chislehurst in Kent, in Cranfield - where his father worked as a Senior Lecturer - and finally in Bromham in Bedford. His talent for painting was evident from a young age, and he painted a number of portraits of his friends and family during his teenage years.

In 1967, aged 17 he suffered a nervous breakdown. However, he completed a pre-diploma art course in Leicester and then began a diploma at the Central School of Art in 1971. Here, his focus was primarily on sculpture, rather than painting. During this period, Central School of Art was increasingly teaching conceptual art, and Charnley's contemporaries in London art schools during this period including members of the Young British Artists.

Charnley had another breakdown in 1971, and was later diagnosed with acute schizophrenia. From 1971 until 1977 he lived at home with his parents between periods of hospitalisation and treatment including ECT, and worked as a painter-decorator alongside other odd jobs. However, he always felt disadvantaged by the stigma surrounding his illness, which prevented him from teaching.

In 1978, Charnley moved to his own accommodation in Bedford, where he re-commenced painting. Determined to make a living as an artist, he focused on the fashionable photo-realist style then popular, producing commercial portraiture and what he called 'flower paintings' - close-ups of flowers painted photorealistically.

However, success was slow in coming, and from 1982 onwards, Charnley's work increasingly took schizophrenia itself as its subject.

This was partially a response to Charnley's study of paintings held in the collection at Bethlem Museum of the Mind (then Bethlem Royal Hospital), including works by William Kurelek and Louis Wain. Charnley wrote of these paintings:

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