‘A visceral experience of psychosis’: why one artist spent three years painting bipolar disorder

Matt Ottley’s latest project, the Tree of Ecstasy and Unbearable Sadness, encompasses 74 artworks, a poem, an orchestral arrangement and an animated film. Illustration: Matt Ottley

Up a steep road to the top of a ridge, all the mundane falls away.

From here, between the surrounding hills of the Northern Rivers region of NSW, the great heft of Wollumbin Mt Warning is revealed – its forested flanks a blue haze, its rock face summit glistening in the sun. Wedge-tailed eagles ride the thermals above, and rainforest redolent with wildlife runs in every direction.