Self Portrait in Cupboard

Cat Vomiting (1976), Study for a Room (1976), and Self-Portrait in Cupboard (1977) 

These three studies were produced at the psychiatric institution Bexley Hospital in Kent, where Cynthia Pell was admitted in 1973. Here, she befriended the art therapist, Britta von Zweigbergk, who became unofficial keeper of the work produced by Pell in the institution. Von Zweigbergk (2002) described how ‘Her drawings and paintings were her dispatches often sent in a hurry with scant regard for personal safety, the art therapy department acting as a base from which her materials were supplied. In her pictures, Cynthia portrayed scenes from the daily life of the hospital, of her own suffering and that of other patients with great simplicity and feeling.’ The half-legible notes-to-self scrawled on Study for a Room and Self-Portrait in Cupboard attest to her observational impulse.