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  • We have 20 personalitiesKen, he's a guy. He's is a gay guy.

  • Every painting he does, he says it's gonna be a train.

  • None of his paintings looks like trains, so I don't know where that comes from.

  • Judy is a 15-year-old personality.

  • Uh, she sees herself as being overweight, so she's always on diets.

  • A spirit of the water, she tends to be out just to have a shower.

  • Yeah, I mean, it... it's still me, but I just accept being called Kim.

  • I'm Kim Noble, and I'm an artist.

  • I also have, uh, dissociative identity disorder, which used to be the old multiple personality disorder.

  • It's when other personalities would take over the body.

  • It's caused from trauma, and the personality, uh, dissociates.

  • So, for me, It's like sleepwalking.

  • Somebody can say, "Oh, you've been, you know, up painting," and I have no memory of doing it.

  • The exhibition I'm putting on is for the Mental Health Foundation.

  • They approached me, so I pulled in from my contemporary artists to the Greats.

  • Great minds are often mistaken, aren't they?

  • - The difference with Kim is that you have no style. - Yeah.

  • It's notyou don't say, "Oh, that's the Kim noble."

  • Each picture shows a whole different side to you.

  • You know, people would said to me, "Well, come back when your style settles."

  • And it was, you know, never getting settled because they were individual artists having their own style.

  • I had to explain my mental health issues to explain the art because they came actually hand-in-hand.

  • For me, it helps me learn about the other personalities and get a feel and understanding of them.

  • And, you know, and that's the closest I'm gonna get to them.

  • I'm Patricia still, but I just accept being called Kim.

  • I'm the main personality now, but before, there was Bonny.

  • Was a... was a main personality, so I would only probably be out two, three times perhaps a week.

  • At first there was only, I think, five, four, five of us painting.

  • And as time's gone on, other personalities have decided to paint as well.

  • I started painting about 12 years ago.

  • I had a support worker here that was a trainee art therapist.

  • And she said, "Oh, why don't you get on and do some painting?

  • I wa... I was sitting here chatting, and I said, "I'm not interested in painting; I don't know how to paint."

  • And in the end, [I] decided to just have a go, and we didn't have any paper or anything, then use back of wallpaper.

  • And it's really really useful and helpful and healing.

  • Oh! This is, um, another room which I store the work in.

  • I try to keep them in personalities like all Missy's are there.

  • This is Bonny's work. That's one of Judy's.

  • There's usually something in. I could see her face within there.

  • Can you see ? Yeah? And I'm not just imagining that. You see.

  • This is one of Key's. That's the Cabala one.

  • Oh she does to see. I think that's Hebrew? I think I don't know.

  • These a lot here are Ria's.

  • Ria, her work is very bright, and it's graphic of abuse.

  • (I) had a lot of trouble with her work because her paintings are not the ones that people want to be put, you know, really on their walls.

  • Yeah, and that I see is dissociation.

  • That is a print of that girl there.

  • So..., and they've all got that on in some sort of way.

  • DID is coping mechanism, so I don't have any knowledge of any trauma so that I can then just gotten with my life.

  • I'm actually not affected by it.

  • Obviously somebody, like Ria, must have some memory of at all. I don't know.

  • I mean her paintings suggest she does.

  • I didn't know a personality was taken over because all line had is these memory gaps.

  • But, you know, he didn't have a name. He didn't have...

  • I didn't have a diagnosis in them days.

  • I was being treated for anything, but DID.

  • One of the other personalities that I think it was 13, tried to take an overdose.

  • And so they were admitted to psychiatric unit and that was it.

  • From there, it was in that hospital.

  • This painting here is by a nun.

  • She's called a nun because we haven't managed to get her name yet.

  • She just seems to pour on the paint so the paint's quite fresh.

  • I see it being very um.... It's very spiritual.

  • A woman with all these little ones dancing around.

  • The next one here is a Missy's.

  • She will only use the three colors and she just splashes on the paint all the time just doing this, and flicking the paint.

  • And when Aimee was younger, she used to like going up there and getting splattered with paint(s).

  • Aimee's now 20.

  • When she was born, Social Services actually said that we would be unfit to bring her up.

  • Um, so they removed her birth, and was putting her up for adoption.

  • I wasn't there at the birth so to me I didn't give birth to her.

  • But obviously I know that the body did, and you know Amy's mine as much as any of the other personalities.

  • So you know I don't want Aimee to feel that she's not mine because she is mine.

  • Obviously, you know our first priority has always been Aimee.

  • And if I thought any of the other personalities would harm Aimee, you know I wouldn't want her to be with us.

  • But they did not even know me. They gave me like an hour assessment, (and) said, "No removed child, removed child."

  • You know, my own therapist who recommended I went (go) for a proper assessment in a mother and baby unit.

  • She was ignored.

  • We did go through the court system, and she came back to live with us after six months.

  • That's why a lot of the paintings that you know you'll see... yeah. Oh! Look! There. There are Nun's.

  • Even the nun who has got nothing to do with anything as far as I'm concerned, but you know even her, there's a mother and child.

  • This is Susy's.

  • When she was first painting, all she kept painting was that: mother and baby, mother and baby.

  • And then one day she done a painting, and when you pull it back, there's no baby.

  • So all our paintings have been mother and baby, mother and baby, mother and baby.

  • And then this ones got a curtain over it. The baby's gone.

  • It's actually really sad, but she never done anymore of those after that.

  • That's something that obviously is deep-rooted and has a knock-on effect.

  • And now you know 20 years on she's doing a law degree. You know in her final at uni.

  • She's a well-adjusted young person.

  • I think we're all touched by mental illness in some shape or form.

  • I hope you're going to understand as well that if you have mental illness, it doesn't necessarily have to be a barrier to anything you want to do.

  • Quite a few of the artists are in the show and have got mental health issues.

  • It is successfully what they do.

  • I, definitely, I prefer doodle artwork.

  • There is no doubt. I love those two pieces. Those are my favorite pieces.

  • I never wanna sold ever cause I like them a lot.

  • I can relate to the person in them.

  • I feel like I can see that, perhaps, they've gone through (a) kind of a struggle.

  • I'm just so proud that I think. No, it's true, though.

  • Because I feel like she's just come such a long way from where her art was until now, and to see every personality exhibited in one room.

  • It's a bit... I don't know, I guess overwhelming.

  • It's um, well, for you it's really.

  • It's something nice about you know actually being classified down as an artist rather than just you know somebody weird.

  • I meant it helps you see that.

  • I don't want to define me, but I don't think anybody with a mental health issue does.

  • I Think I have heard that some people do integrate and become one personality.

  • I've been told that I can't integrate because my brain is as there are different pathways.

  • And so it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to integrate.

  • But before even being told that, because that was later on after my diagnosis, I never entered therapy wanting integration.

  • I just thought that, you know, who are going to be left with?

  • I just used to too many artists.

We have 20 personalitiesKen, he's a guy. He's is a gay guy.

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