Audrey Amiss

Audrey Amiss

Audrey Amiss (1933-2013) was a UK artist, whose art was re-discovered and recognised after her death in 2013. Audrey Amiss won a scholarship to train in Painting at the Royal Academy of Arts, but was unable to complete her studies following her first mental health breakdown and incarceration at Warlingham Park Hospital, Croydon in 1958. After her time in hospital, Audrey trained as a shorthand typist and worked for the Civil Service in a typing pool. During her lifetime, Audrey Amiss was not well known as an artist and spent large periods of her life in psychiatric hospitals and units, often against her will and following arrest for civil disturbance.

Audrey was prolific in her artistic output, and is known to have created hundreds of sketches, paintings and other artworks over the course of her life. Much of this work was not seen publicly; while Audrey entered her work for submission in exhibitions and prizes or showed work at open exhibitions, she often expressed frustration at the formal art scene and her lack of recognition as an artist: "I was once in the tradition of social realism, also called the kitchen sink school of painting. But I am now avant-garde and misunderstood."

Audrey described her work as "a visual diary, i.e. home surroundings, local scenes, events, changing seasons and weather, flower drawings and paintings, life drawings, etc". Amiss focused in on details of daily life in a series of meticulous docmentation in a series of journals, log books, account books, record books, photo albums and scrapbooks. Each of these series of volumes was used for a defined purpose, from recording letters sent (record books), receipts (account books), log books (diary-type entries), and scrapbooks (food eaten, junk mail and collected ephemera).

Audrey Amiss died in 2013 at the age of 79, having lived in semi-reclusive lifestyle in her later years. When her family cleared the home, they discovered hundreds of sketchbooks, scrapbooks, photograph albums, account books, record books and log books, spanning from Audrey's early life up until the day of her death on 10th July 2013.

In 2014, Audrey Amiss' family donated the collection in its entirety to Wellcome Collection, a library and museum in London which focuses on human health and medicine.

A film inspired by Audrey Amiss' life is currently in production, written and directed by Carol Morley and produced by Cairo Cannon. The film, Typist Artist Pirate King, draws on the extensive archive of Audrey Amiss at Wellcome Collection and imagines a road trip of Audrey Amiss and a psychiatric nurse. The film was created following Carol Morley's time as a Screenwriting Fellow at Wellcome Trust between 2015 and ??? , where she encountered Audrey Amiss' archive and undertook extensive research to develop the film.

Early life

Audrey grew up in Sunderland with her parents (Arthur and Belle) and sister, Dorothy. As a child, Audrey attended Bede Grammar School for Girls, where her artistic talent began to flourish. After school, Audrey went on to attend the Sunderland College of Art, before winning a scholarship to the Royal Academy School of Art in London in 1954.

In popular culture

Audrey Amiss' life is the subject of a feature length film, Typist Artist Pirate King, written and directed by BAFTA-nominated film maker Carol Morley, and scheduled for release in 2022.