Words I Never Said: Exploring Mental Health with Anthony Bartley
Written by Nicole Misfitx
Published on July 2nd, 2025
“There’s a pride that I felt, seeing people come out to something like this, because it’s hard to show up in that way for yourself” – Anthony Bartley.
How are you feeling right now? Have you checked in with your mind and body today? Have you asked someone in your life how they’re really feeling?
Improving mental health can really be that simple, as conversations and check-ins with people in your life, and with yourself. Unfortunately, it is still not a normalized topic in society. Heavy stigma around mental illness, suicide, and the darker layers of the psyche exists. In a world connected nonstop with technology, we’re still so isolated. Insulated within our worlds, perspectives, and narratives, we were taught and still carry.
Chicago artist and mental health advocate Anthony Bartley created a space where people can put down the burdens they’ve been carrying. Words I Never Said was more than a solo show that hung on gallery walls for five weeks in April and May. It was rooted in being an interactive, welcoming space for the community. For the 27-year-old artist who grew up in the Washington Heights neighborhood, community was a challenge.
“I struggled with the idea of what it meant to me and what I needed from a community. I was a lonely kid, and that was compounded by anxiety and depression. But I think that entire time I knew that I wanted to be around people, but I didn’t know exactly what that looked like,” Bartley said. He received the Piece of My Love grant from Found Objects this year and linked with Connect Gallery’s owner, Rob McKay, to bring the exhibition to life.
“I struggled with the idea of what it meant to me and what I needed from a community. I was a lonely kid, and that was compounded by anxiety and depression. But I think that entire time I knew that I wanted to be around people, but I didn’t know exactly what that looked like”
The paintings all featured strong emotions of nostalgia, grief, joy, sadness, and anger, with a question next to each one, “When was the last time you felt this way?” Viewers were invited to respond on post-it notes placed under the painting. “Some people put two words, some people got vulnerable and wrote several sentences, he said, “It was just kind of beautiful to see that there were people that were putting their post-its up at the same time as somebody else, and you might not talk to the other person, but there’s a moment of realization of it’s not just me.”
In his family, like most, mental health wasn’t talked about. “If it was talked about, it was a background thing or an aside. Somebody would make a comment like, ‘oh yeah, I was depressed as a kid,’ and that would be it. That’s the end of the conversation.” Bartley started to experience harder mental health struggles at the end of high school. “The best they could tell me was you’re just going through something, you’ll get through it, and that was the extent of it,” he said, “People around me weren’t trying to necessarily diminish it, but they didn’t know either.”
Past generations had even less experience with talking about feelings, emotions, and struggles. “They were in an even more repressed culture. So, their response to you is what they experienced, you just got to get over it.
“No one’s going to help you, and that just keeps passing down,” Bartley said.
Among his friends, it was the same. When playing Xbox Live with online friends, if someone brought up feeling sad, they would all laugh. “You might be laughing genuinely about the fact that somebody just made fun of your sadness, that didn’t help you in the long run, but it was a temporary relief because there’s a kinship here where people understand it enough to make a joke about it, but not enough to help me through it,” he said.
The thing that stopped the suicidal darkness was, he said, “I became really uncomfortable with what I was going through while I was standing there.” He continued, “I went back to my dorm and I painted, and I couldn’t tell you why painting was what I went to that night, but that’s where I ended up.”
The norm for men is to keep emotions and feelings shoved down. The stereotype is that men are expected to be masculine, tough, and never show emotion; otherwise, they’re shamed, considered weak, and all sorts of other nasty, poignant words. There is less statistical data on men’s mental health than women, due to men being less likely to seek mental health treatment due to stigma. Which means, men are less likely than women to be diagnosed with mental illnesses, with even lower numbers for Black and Hispanic men.
The topic of mental health didn’t appear in his friend group until late high school. “It was not in the conversation until the first person that I knew of in my age group, we lost him to suicide. But it still wasn’t a real conversation. It was just, ‘oh, this person’s gone.’” Suicide is, unfortunately, a leading cause of male deaths. “The suicide rate among males in 2023 was approximately four times higher than the rate among females. Males make up 50% of the population, but nearly 80% of suicides,” according to CDC data.
Anthony’s anxiety and depression worsened during his first year in college. “I had friends, but I still felt alone. I wasn’t doing terrible in classes, but I felt like a failure. It was like all these constant dark thoughts. I was always super anxious about talking to people, about trying to make new friends, about going anywhere but class,” Bartley said. Those feelings, that heaviness, led him to his darkest moment on March 17th, 2017. At 2am, with no one around on campus, he found the tallest parking garage and stood on the edge, despite hating heights. The thing that stopped the suicidal darkness was, he said, “I became really uncomfortable with what I was going through while I was standing there.” He continued, “I went back to my dorm and I painted, and I couldn’t tell you why painting was what I went to that night, but that’s where I ended up.”
Societal stigma around suicidal thoughts can feel isolating, like you have no one to talk to, it drops you in a dark hole you can’t see out of. Luckily, a dorm RA did reach out to him and help him get therapy, an eye-opening moment for Bartley. “I still think it was the fact that another person kind of pushed me, like, ‘hey, I can’t help you in this way, but I can support you in finding somebody who can.’ I don’t think I would have thought I should go to therapy immediately, because to me, it was like this event has ended, and I don’t want to think about it again,” he said. That began his mental health journey, but also his series of self-portraits that he continues to do yearly since 2017. “This is just me needing to say what I’m going through, without writing it necessarily. They’re just for me… a form of visual journaling,” he said. Expressing himself with words is something he has always struggled with. Thus, the name of the show, Words I Never Said, is him expressing his thoughts and feelings visually rather than traditionally with words. On the sides of the paintings are thoughts from his Notes app, reflections that resonated with him.
Deconstructing the idea of what a gallery show can be, hosts held workshops covering various creative, healing, and holistic concepts; sewing, tinctures, and incense making. Photo day stood out to Bartley. Three photographers set up to take free film portraits of people, something many hadn’t experienced before. “I think there’s something powerful in seeing yourself in an image that somebody else takes of you, because you physically get to see how somebody else views you,” Bartley said, “This is a picture that you’re like, that’s me and I love that somebody else saw me like that.” The act of being seen by someone else after so long of ignoring ourselves can be a vulnerable moment, but a powerful moment of healing. That’s why therapy can seem terrifying at first, sitting with someone who validates and hears you, dropping your armor.
A workshop series that held space for this was group therapy for men, held every Monday for five weeks at the gallery, and was the most impactful for Bartley. “I knew what benefit it could have because, I’ve had, I guess you could say group therapy sessions with my friends, where we’re all sitting down, and it may not be intentional, but it gets to the point we’re all talking about like emotions and problems and there’s a benefit to it.”
“I think there’s something powerful in seeing yourself in an image that somebody else takes of you, because you physically get to see how somebody else views you,” Bartley said, “This is a picture that you’re like, that’s me and I love that somebody else saw me like that.”
There was a regular group who attended, showing up for themselves, even if it seemed intimidating at first. “There’s a pride that I felt, seeing people come out to something like this, because it’s hard to show up in that way for yourself, especially when nobody’s making you, because no one wants to sit for an hour and a half and talk about the dark things going on in their life. Even if it makes you feel better after, you don’t want to initially go through it. So the fact that there are people who showed up five Mondays in a row after work to do it. I’m just proud that the community is there, and that people want this and realize the need for it,” Bartley said with a smile. This helped break down barriers of therapy, reframing it as a conversation, holding space. Shoving it down just leaves people to be a powder keg ready to blow at any moment.
“There’s a quote from The Punisher, ‘You’re just one bad day away from being me.’ A lot of people are one bad interaction from spinning out,” Bartley said. They were able to see, therapy is as simple as talking about your problems that week and releasing that weight.
As for his artistic journey, when younger, Bartley was inspired heavily by cartoons, Takashi Murakami, and science. Pokémon, Digimon, and Kingdom of Hearts video games all created intricately illustrated worlds he loved, later influencing his animated style. “Takashi Murakami was the first time I ever saw someone who was recognized as an artist produce art that wasn’t what I had been told that art was,” he said, “When I saw the animation he did for Kanye West’s “Good Morning,” [music video] I was like, oh, people are still saying that this is art. In my head at the time, because I’m still a kid, art was European paintings and the Renaissance.”
Another huge inspiration came from his love of anime and manga. What pulled him in most to specific ones were the art style, a bit of dark humor. Some of his favorites include One Piece, Attack on Titan, and Naruto. “Anime is one of those art forms that very heavily references and incorporates the real-life culture of where it’s coming from,” Bartley said. Okiagari (Getting Up) [ 起き上がり] stood out with its distinctive style from other pieces.
“This is inspired by the Daruma (達磨) doll that I got when I went to Japan. Darumas, you get them when their eyes are blank, and you fill one in when you decide on a wish or a manifestation, and when it comes true, traditionally, within a year, you fill in the other eye. Then you would burn it at the shrine that you got it from, so that that energy is released back. I can’t take it back to the shrine because I haven’t been back to Japan, but my Daruma, when I got it, the wish was for a supportive community and a solo show, so I filled the other eye in on April 18th of 2025, opening night of the show.”
Experimenting with different techniques and styles comes from his love of science as a kid. His mom was studying for her PhD, now the dean of arts and culture at Triton College, and would take him along to classes. After Bartley received his degree in biology, part of his career included illustrating pamphlets for research and scientific journals. “I’m a big experimenter, I think that’s always been core to who I am. I want to test things, and I do that often, even with my practice. I view almost every work that I do as an experiment because there’s usually some sort of technique that I’m doing, where it’s like how does this work here, This is what I think I could use it for next time. I’m observing how it works. So it’s still a very scientific method and how I view things, that never left me.”
Another medium he has experimented with is fashion with Happy Days Apparel, “a mission-based clothing brand seeking to further mental health awareness.” Initially, he felt fashion wasn’t a world he belonged to, as he just dressed for comfort. A switch flipped in his head, and he started to think of how to make his work more accessible. “There are people who like what I do, but they’re never going to buy a print. That’s not how they interact with art. But they’ll buy that work printed on a shirt because that’s how they enjoy art.” The clothing line is hand-sewn and screen printed by hand, with a one-of-one uniqueness for each piece. You can find out more about his clothing brand at the website and Instagram.
Archaeology of Self is the piece he found most impactful to the whole curation. Done in oil paint, it had realistic elements, depicting a scene almost out of a video game. “It represents an ending for the curation of the 20 pieces, also it’s a starting point. I feel like this moment of self-discovery is something that a lot of people experience multiple times, and you’re always finding something new about yourself. So I wanted to make sure that I ended on something that’s not a cap off to the story. It’s a cap to this part of the story.”
Nicole Misfitx is a writer and photographer passionate about documenting art, graffiti, and street art in Chicago. Her love of writing led her to receive a degree in Creative Writing and Journalism from schooling at Columbia College Chicago and SNHU. She then combined her love of documenting art, photography, and writing to showcase various art, artists, and important social topics. Her drive for writing is to give exposure to lesser-known artists and the overall street art and graffiti scene in Chicago. In addition, she enjoys nature, travel, movies, all things spooky, and fashion.