Nick Blinko (b. 1961) The Watchers (1998, pen and watercolour)

Nick Blinko, diagnosed with schizo-affective disorder, has been drawing intricate and often microscopically detailed pictures since childhood. He has found that while medication impairs both his concentration and his technical abilities, artistically productive periods when he declines treatment carry their own risks: ‘When I got ill, I started to plant paintings in my garden to see if they would grow’. Blinko is wryly dismissive of his home town on the outskirts of London. ‘Samuel Palmer; he had Shoreham, Stanley Spencer had Cookham and I'm lumbered with Abbots Langley. It was the birthplace of the only English pope, Pope Adrian, Nicholas Brakspear. I was so horrified by religious wars, when I was deluded I had a fixation that all those people had died for me so that I would be raised to the status of Pope and I'd construct a new Vatican in Abbots Langley’. Blinko has written a commentary on The Watchers: ‘In order to expand, the cell partitions. Division of mind and body. Two psychoses halved and united. To collect recollections in days where self and personality are ending. Heads as ever, emerge from the mind. Body of work. Each eye depicted divided. Vision divided’. Thanks to Tony Thorne and Henry Boxer. More information about Nick Blinko at www.outsiderart.co.uk.