Kathleen McVey

Kathleen McVey’s work encapsulates her experience with bipolar disorder and mood dysregulation. Their work communicates and interrogates the complexities and extremities through a personal language of jarring mark-making and representational forms.

Lucid Memory, 2024
Oil on board

See close-up details below

“Lucid Memory is a reflection on childhood trauma, the sad common trigger in severe mental illness. The demon crawls under the bedsheets on the right peering at you, mocking you. On the left the figure faces away, ordained
in crosses, she is like a holy figure. Her back is turned in denial and shame.”

Psychosis Cat, 2023

Collagraph

I see blue, it hovers in my eyes as a warning of mania. As it grows the haze of colour evolves a personality. A catty personality. It’s not judging just yet as it has no eyes to send filthy looks.

Fairy Cattle, 2023

Viscosity Collagraph

In Scotland fairies used deer as cattle and they milked them.

About Kathleen McVey

Kathleen McVey is a visual artist working in Dunfermline, Scotland. Her research explores the challenges and tensions of severe mental illness, creating a visual narrative of experiences with the intent to interact with and create a necessary dialogue around mental health to society at large.

“Exposing mental illness is a vital part in gaining public recognition, and addressing a vastly misunderstood community.”