Phoenix
Chik 2024
"Men down the pub watching football, playing pool, nothing is face to face. But when they turn you know what is going to be said is serious. Eye contact is 70% communication. That really rubber stamps what you say"
Chik’s journey back was founded on volunteering; supporting others, becoming an amateur boxing coach, working with Men’s Shed and attempting to develop a mental health support pathway at his rugby club. His work is deeply informed by all his lived experiences, the pandemic, child and adolescent mental health nursing and navigating a multicultural identity.
Like a Phoenix rising from ashes, Chik embraces this new narrative and identity as a “lived experience clinician,” drawing on his professional experiences and personal challenges to help others build resilience and find healing.
The painting reflects on this journey and the importance of face-to-face interaction; “Talking is what matters”. The scene features Chik now arisen from the ashes, supporting his slumped over, sick former self.
"I feel I even have even more of a commitment, of a depth of calling"
Andy first painted Chik in 2020 when his recovery from severe COVID was the focus of the painting. An experience that left him not only fighting for his life, but angry with the circumstances that put him and many others at risk.
Chik has always been people orientated, focussed on helping and supporting others, through his work as a psychiatric nurse and his involvement in rugby. When COVID and then Long-COVID took him away from that his sense of purpose and identity took a battering.
"My life had value because of the job I did…"
Chik giving his testimony at the Transformative Pathways event at the IMH, Nottingham November 2024.
Chik was a participant in Andy Farr's Being Seen painting project, and also Portraits of Isolation in 2020.