Shebang

Mental Health by Tom Hammick.

Shebang: A rough hut or shelter. Origin North American from c 1850. Derivation probably a corruption of  the French word for hut, ’chabane’

When we were young, living in a picturesque village in Hampshire, there were two men who as children we found mesmerising  who eked out a living doing odd jobs. Both lived in shacks of sorts  at opposite ends of the village, both were furiously self sufficient and both were challenged when it came to washing! We weren’t frightened of them, but more weary of what they had been through in their lives to get to this. (I was beginning to feel at the age of 8 that their current position in the semi-enclosed society of our heimat, where they were accepted as outcasts and oddballs, might have been  corralled by deterministic forces, rather than them having a weakness when it came to the Sartrean ‘we are our choices’ version of positivity that our post war go-getting parents insisted we pursue. )

Subsequently, this painting is an example of many images I have made in response to imagining the most simple life of a man or woman living light in a shack in the woods. In this instance the building is a ‘Bucky Fuller’ inspired duodecic dome…. The simplest most practical post industrial way of creating a stable shelter with the least means. The figure and his hut is dwarfed by the Scot’s pine above him.

So many people are tipped over the edge when it comes to an existential crisis in life, or when events around family, love and loss, drug use, the loss of employment, trauma through PTSD, and a deep rooted feeling of alienation in society, force us into hermitic existence and a shut down of interaction with the world around us. And most of the causes are wrapped in challenges around mental stability. This is why for me, the organisation Hospital Rooms is so vital for the part they play in supporting our beloved  NHS in their roll to help with challenges around mental health.