Ron Henriques (1949-2021) was an artist, writer, inventor, and psychiatric patient. After being diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1970, he spent much of his adult life in institutions including hospitals, a care home, supported housing and finally in a nursing home, in and around Exeter.
Ron began to paint seriously when provided with art opportunities through occupational therapy sessions at Digby Hospital. Ron mainly used acrylic paints but also experimented with different mediums, textures, thickeners etc, and incorporated pastels, crayon, biro. He explored the use of Day-Glo colour and glitter paint, and sometimes added Dymo labels, sticking them on his paintings. Ron’s process of developing a painting, certainly in latter years, was to prime the board and carefully draw the images progressively before painting - maybe making changes whilst painting.
Ron was particularly interested in strong bright colours and liked to find new or unusual colours or receive these as gifts. He enjoyed visiting art shops, and later was able to buy paints online, with support from staff in using the internet. Ron kept records of his research into colour and texture as an important part of his process. Ron generally used a palette for his selected colours, then applied them to his painting without mixing them, although he might add in thickeners or gels to change the texture.
