Montrose VA 1958 – 1988
58 color pencil drawings, 169 pencil sketches, hand written text.
11″ x 14″ x 4″
circa 1999-2013
Through stunning word and image—58 color, pencil drawings based on specific paintings, 169 pencil sketches and handwritten text by David Byrd—Montrose VA 1958-1988 transforms mental and emotional suffering into a body of work—a vision of the isolation and desperation of mental illness.
“Looking at my drawing and painting of Montrose VA years after I had done them I had the idea that maybe they would make a book. Any subject is book material apparently; war, high society and low, concentration camps, starvation, life and death, insanity. The patients at Montrose are not all insane or incompetent but do have emotional, neurological, psychiatric problems. Sometimes short and acute, sometimes long term, permanent… I tried to paint because I had the remote idea that it might serve me in my behavior to others.” – David Byrd
David Byrd reading from Montrose VA
