Your style seems to be ‘documentary’ rather than ‘expressive’. 
How do you relate to the content in your work, particularly in terms of your portrayal of other people in your work. 

For years when I painted and drew I was aware that my work had no meaning. I was preoccupied with technique, and the subject matter was little more than making a decision to draw a still life or a portrait. 
I found an art group in Crayford, ‘Centrepieces’, and Debbie Mayes who worked there at the time said that I should show my work. She said I should  write captions to go with my work to explain my pictures. So I did that and again when I showed my work at the IOS and at Bethlem. The pictures started to form a narrative. The narrative turned into a book and the book started to have a meaning.
When I write the book I decided not to write just about myself, my life isn’t that interesting and I not a writer who can make anything intersteing. Ithought that people I knew most of whom are not with us anymore deserved to be remembered instead of being shamefully brushed under the carpet by their families who because of their illness put them away .
The people in my pictures and writing about the old hospitals are a remembrance.

Show hospital pictures with this.

Many artists, particularly ‘outsider’ artists are thought to use art to tell stories about themselves or express their beliefs.
Your work seems more objective, that is you record people and their behaviour without imposing your own concerns on them.
Is that an accurate interpretation of your work?

If you try and paint and draw impartially and amorally then you may get a more objective picture. Many outsider artists explore their own inner space, perhaps mapping their unconscious mind . Surrealists were inspired by the art of the mentally ill in theb Prinzhorn collectin.

But as the hospitals were being closed down I was aware that the hospitals and the people in them were in danger of being written out of history and forgotten. So that tied in with my idea of making a record of the people I knew. Then the meaning and purpose became evident. Why had thses tragedies occurred.
Then I started to research to find out what had happened.
Then I had become a care in the community patient. 
Not day patients any more because the day hospital and OT had closed 
And I stated to notice what wa happening to patients in the community

Pictures of the community
And it’s a different challenge to the old hospitals so I became concerned about other residents in the housing project, and for myself.

 
How does your own personal experience of the hospital environment influence your approach?
I was discouraged from drawing and painting in the hospitals.
I t was considered an unrealistic career choice.
One religious psychiatrist considered my work craven images. This discouragement happened quite a lot in hospital. Cynthia Pell is an obvious example of the disrespect artists with mental health problems.
In the old hospitals you could not really own anything without it being stolen. You did not have the privacy that people take for granted. You were woken up early in the morning then sometimes you weren’t allowed to lay on your bed until the evening. The kitchens were locked. You could not make a cup of tea when you wanted. So when you leave hospital you try to replace the life you left behind or think that you should have had. This can lead to intoxication hoarding especially if you do not have day care to fall back on.
So I decided to do what I wanted, paint and draw. But I also worked part time at the Clubhouse before I found Crayford Centre and Centrepieces

In a round about way
Art and existentialism, existentialism and RD Laing
Schizophrenia and existentialism.

RD Laing’s therapeutic houses
Boarding out
Treatment before medication.
The care in the community medication disaster.

I learnt to paint and draw as a child. When I attempted to do abstract art I was told off. I was told that an artist should draw what they saw. Drawing from the imagination, the unconscious mind, inner space was still a new thing, treated with superstition. When I was born it was only two years after the witchcraft laws had been withdrawn. Computors were the size of a room. So that’s what I have done