'It's good to talk': Artist creates amazing iPad images with one finger to raise awareness of mental health

A south London artist’s amazing digital art created with just one finger on an iPad shows the candid reality of struggling with depression.

Kirsty Latoya vowed never to draw again following the sudden death of her mother Rose, 59, from a heart condition last year.

She told the Standard: “Drawing made me happy, and I felt guilty doing anything that made me happy so I decided to stop doing it.

“I didn’t want to be happy without her, I didn’t know how to.”

Friends eventually convinced the 26-year-old, from Battersea, who says she started doodling “as soon as she could write”, to develop the passion that made her mum proud.

She added: “My friends said to me, ‘you need to carry on’, and my work did make mum proud.

“Even in the hospital the day before she died she was showing the nurses.”

Miss Latoya developed a passion for digital art using her mobile phone while working in a call centre and used her unique skills to express to family and friends how she was feeling.

“My first picture after mum died was a self-portrait of me crying, holding up a mask that was smiling.

“I did it for me, I didn’t think about the impact on anyone else but it showed that I was putting on a brave face but I was broken inside,” she added.

The artist’s images include portraits dawbed with words such as “ugly”, “fat”, “weird” and “boring” and others branded “loyal”, “driven” and “strong”.

One poignant image shows Ms Layota’s own torso with “boy figure”, “too skinny” and “eat more” scrawled across it to highlight the extent of body shaming faced by young women.

She shared her pictures on Instagram and quickly gathered thousands of followers who thanked her for giving them an easier way to talk about mental health.

Ms Layota said: “I’ve had people saying the pictures made it easier to share their emotions and that made me proud because I only did this for me but when it’s doing something for them too, that’s great.

“I’ve had school kids messaging me, young women and people much older than me all sharing their experiences.

“It’s great, it is important to talk about how we’re feeling, when it’s bottled up and internalised that’s where the problems are.

“We need to accept it, to say 'I do struggle with my mental health but I’m talking about it and that’s okay. This is me'.”

Follow Kirsty on Twitter and Instagram @KirzArt