I tell the world my work is about mental health and the marginalised, and then I show them people.

No labels. No categories. Just people, moving through life together.

Human. Beautiful. Ordinary.

Sally Matthews

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Sally Matthews

“I grew up with Sally, she was the first artist I ever knew.”
Taryn Everdeen

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Taryn Everdeen

“I met Taryn the way everyone meets Taryn. Unexpectedly.”
David Shenton

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David Shenton

“David reminded me what it feels like to be led by curiosity.”
Plum

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Plum

“Plum is not contained by any of the descriptions given to her.”
Salah El Nagar

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Salah El Nagar

“I painted him not as a man displaced, but as a man who reclaims space.”
Pete Turrell

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Pete Turrell

“He held the night together, gently, like it belongs to everyone else.”

When someone is reduced to a diagnosis, a category, or a narrative shaped by others, their story stops being theirs.

As someone who belongs to multiple marginalised groups, I know how quickly words and labels can silence a person before they are heard. When we reduce these experiences to labels, we remove individuality and create stigma.

Ordinary exists to disrupt that structure.

Ordinary — Siris Hill
“I’m not negating the difficult imagery of mental illness, that work is vital. I’m adding to it. When one kind of picture is the only kind ever made, it stops being a depiction and becomes the definition.”
Sally Matthews — Siris Hill

Collecting Stories

I’m a collector of stories. Time is our most valuable asset. My favourite way to spend mine is giving people a chance to talk and share. I’m seeking truth, and through painting, people show me theirs.

I live alongside them until I crack them.

These pieces are the result of a collaborative process, but they will always be my reflection of the time we spent together: what I noticed, what stayed with me, the part of them that called to me to paint.

My measure of success is the moment I show someone their portrait. I want them to see something undeniable. Something untouchable by their own inner critic.

“I go from town to town. I sit with people for hours, days, sometimes weeks. I drink their coffee. I hear their stories. I feel the weight of their days settle into my own skin. If I’m doing it right, I disappear into it entirely.

By the time I leave, I don’t know who’s being painted. Them, or me.”

Plum — Siris Hill

Life Lessons

“I have never left someone’s world the same person I was when I arrived. As though I’ve taken pieces of them. A way of understanding the world I couldn’t have found alone.”

Ordinary has given me something I didn’t expect. An opportunity to heal from agoraphobia and social anxiety, after spending a decade mostly at home.

It started in my hometown. It was my friends who helped me by encouraging me to engage in their communities which pushed me to leave my home. I painted and wrote about these experiences. These ordinary people, who in my life were exceptional. Later I started travelling the country, approaching strangers and giving them the same attention I would give to a friend. Ordinary was born from that.

Recognition is often reserved for those who triumph over hardship or excel against the odds. Elevating people in this way is still a form of exclusion. Celebrating people by lifting them into the extraordinary still places them outside the everyday. We are either praised or overlooked entirely. Both positions create a hierarchy of worth, where dignity is granted only when it can be justified.
Siris Hill — studio

About

My practice comes from lived experience. I grew up with chronic illness and spent much of my childhood and adolescence in medical systems that regularly removed my agency. As a teenager, I developed symptoms later diagnosed as CPTSD. My health created distance between my family, and by nineteen, I was estranged from them and became homeless.

“I learned early what it feels like to be reduced to a label or a problem that could be discarded.”

Whilst living rough, I discovered art as a method of soothing during panic attacks. I would scribble on my hands, arms, scraps of tissue, anything I could find. Over time, this instinctive act became a practice and a tool I used to prevent episodes of panic. It became a kind of therapy.

I am aware that my position sits in tension with the ethics of Ordinary. To make this work visible, I have had to do the very thing the project critiques: be seen, be recognised, be exceptional.

Ordinary exists because I understand what it means to have to earn visibility, but the work itself offers the opposite. It creates a space where people exist fully, beyond pity, heroism, or redemption. It gives dignity as a default, not a reward.

It produces portraits and stories that belong to those depicted, not to the expectations of others. It leaves traces, visual and written, that refuse simplification or erasure.