Joyce Laing

Joyce Laing OBE, art therapist (1939 - 2022) was a 'pioneer of art therapy'.

Laing saw a means of releasing creativity in long term psychiatric in-patients such as Angus McPhee (who did not speak for fifty years but created woven grass art), and worked with long-term (including violent) prisoners in the Barlinnie Special Unit, Glasgow, Scotland, such as Jimmy Boyle She was awarded an OBE in 2008 for her work and founded two major Scottish art exhibitions and wrote and edited publications about the evolution of art therapy.

She discovered, in Craig Dunain psychiatric hospital, Angus McPhee from South Uist, who suffered from schizophrenia and did not speak for fifty years but made 'art' works from natural materials, which he silently saw swept away with the autumn leaves, or quietly burned when clearing the grounds as part of the 'farm ward'. She got his consent to exhibit some of his work and continued to visit him after his release until his death and wrote a book about his work.

Laing lived in Pittenweem, Fife and founded an art festival there, which included some of the rescued work by Angus McPhee. She also became a consultant and lecturer at the University of Edinburgh School of Art Therapy. which was made a permanent exhibition in 2022 in the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, in 1981 serving on the board until 2007, which built up from old photographs of local lifeboats to annual open house events (art works exhibited in residents' homes) and grew to involve known artists such as Ian Hamilton Finlay, Will Maclean, Oscar Marzaroli, Joan Eardley and John Bellany. Angus McPhee Weaver of Grass