For many artists, their craft is a pleasant pastime. For others, it is their chosen career. But for some, art is an absolute lifeline – a place of calm and reflection in a life too often troubled by the storm of mental health issues.

Such is the case with local artist Phil Sigglekow, ‘Art is the staple part of my life,’ Phil explains. ‘If I didn’t have art, I don’t know what I’d do. I started to come to Magenta when it first opened. Back then I was a very unwell young man, 18 years old, with very poor mental health.’

Phil is emphatic about Magenta’s value. ‘It's therapy for me. I feel satisfied once I've completed an art work. It keeps me busy, and I get such a good feeling. It lifts my mood, a chance to zone out of my thought pattern and be absorbed in what I am doing.’

In the past Phil has mostly painted superheroes, but more recently its been pop culture-influenced paintings, ‘I call myself an outsider artist,’ Phil says proudly. ‘My works are mostly always portraits, abstract and original, with my own kind of cheeky take on things.

‘Art has saved me,’ says Phil. ‘I feel I‘ve come a long way since I began, to where it's taken me. I now have solo shows. It's come to a point that I now sell my work.

‘When you sell your art, it’s a sense of achievement, that someone else likes it enough to want to buy it, it’s such a buzz.’