About the artist
Nobody's perfect. Neither is my art. That's the whole point.
No pressure to read all of this. Take what you want, skip the rest.
This is outsider art. This is art brut. Raw, untrained, intuitive — made with my hands and my nervous system instead of a rulebook. I'm far from perfect, and so is my work, and I wouldn't fix either one if I could.
Nothing here is made by AI. Every line, every shape, every hidden message is drawn by hand — usually with a tiny two-inch safety pen on whatever paper I could get. No prompts, no generators, no shortcuts. Just me, the pen, and the page.
I've loved art since I was little. It was always the thing I was drawn to — before I had words for any of what I was feeling, I had paper. It's never stopped being that for me.
A small fun fact: I'm left-handed. So if you notice smudges in my drawings, that's why. My hand drags right through the ink as I go. I've stopped trying to keep them out — they're part of the record of my hand being there.
The psych stay
How The Psych Stay Collection was born
I was in a psychiatric hospital, surrounded by psychosis, in a place where everyone's skeletons were outside their closets for everyone to see. There were no phones, no internet, and one wall phone shared by every patient. Every conversation was monitored. For the first time in a long time, I had nothing to keep me busy or distract myself from the pain — the physical pain and the mental pain I suffer from every second of every day.
I asked my husband when he came to visit if he could bring me some of my art supplies, because I wasn't allowed to have any electronics inside. They let me have art markers, paper, and a pen — but only if I used them outside my room, monitored. That was hard because I usually lay down to make art; I have chronic back pain. But having those supplies back in my hands made me happy. So I sat outside my room, with that tiny bendable pen, and started drawing.
It is extremely difficult to write with, let alone create art — so small, so bendy. But it made me so much more grateful for all the little things I easily took for granted outside of that place. I was able to find happiness there anyway, and that was what was in my mind and body, so that is what came out on paper. The colorful Skeleton Psychosis collection was born, one piece after another.
These prints are meant to be collected and displayed as a gentle reminder to find the good in the bad moments, and to be grateful for the little things in life we usually take for granted.
The secret tradition
The Secret Patient Pencil
Pencils are considered contraband in a psychiatric hospital. But on the first day I arrived, I found the Secret Patient Pencil wedged between my mattress and the bed frame. It fell out onto the floor when I pulled the sheet back to get into bed. It was most likely hidden and used by the patient who stayed in my room before me.
I like to think they left it there for me. Maybe the patient before them left it for them, too. I made the decision to carry on that secret tradition in room ***, hoping the next patient whose room that becomes may find the Secret Patient Pencil hidden in the same spot — left behind for them to hopefully use in a safe way to help them through their stay, like it helped me during mine.
That is why the collection of seven graphite girls is named the Secret Patient Pencil Collection. It is quiet. It is private. It is passed from one hurting person to another as a tiny act of survival and care.
The tool
Every line was drawn with a two-inch bendable pen
In the psych ward you aren't allowed real pens or pencils — nothing rigid, nothing sharp, nothing anyone could use to hurt themselves or someone else. What they hand you instead is about two inches long and made of soft, flexible plastic. It bends while you're drawing with it.
So when you look closely at these pieces, know that every line came out of that little bending pen, in a place where almost everything else had been taken away. It made the work harder, and it made the work honest.
What each piece is meant to do
Every piece I make has a story and a meaning behind it — for me as the artist, and then passed along to the buyer and owner of that original or print. My hope is that it encourages, inspires, or reminds you of something that helps you in your own life and in your own story.
It is a way of us connecting through art and helping one another. When you take a piece home, you aren't just buying a print. You are holding something that was made in a very real, very hard moment, and choosing to keep that honesty alive in your own space.
Every crooked line is a reminder: you don't have to be perfect to be worthy. You're allowed to make mistakes. You're allowed to live loud, live strange, live true to yourself.
So yes — it might look a little weird. A little different. If that's your language, I hope you love it for exactly that reason. And if you're one of the people quietly falling apart behind a very convincing face, I hope it lands somewhere softer than words can.
Because every single one of us is carrying something heavy. Often the people closest to us have no idea. Often we never get the support, the resources, the help we actually deserve. I know that silence. I've lived inside it.
My art is here to say: it's okay to struggle. What's not okay is believing you can't ask for help — that you have to swallow it because of the stigma around mental health. That's the thing I want to break.
Nobody is well. We're all a little crazy. Some people are just better at hiding it. Some have more resources, better care, an easier draw of the genetic deck. Some of us are working with brains that were built a little more broken. None of it makes anyone less human.
When you look at my work, I want you to see authenticity. A real person who hurts, who heals, who laughs hard and lives anyway.
The signature and the hidden message
My signature is part of the story: my CR initials in cursive inside a small square, with uneven devil horns above and a halo circling the top. Devil and angel in the same breath — an ode to bipolar disorder and the way my moods can turn on a dime. When you see that mark, you know it's a Channon Rose piece.
Sometimes you'll find little blades of grass growing up around that signature. That's on purpose. The grass means I'm still growing — that I still have so much to learn, and that I keep taking the ugly things that happen to me and trying to grow something living out of them. Even in the worst soil, something green comes up.
There's one more thing woven into every piece — a hidden message. Sometimes it's a word, sometimes it's a feeling, sometimes it's something I needed to get out of my body and onto paper so it wouldn't sit inside me anymore. It's how I turn what's hard into something a little lighter. Some people love going on a little treasure hunt to find it; other people never look, and that's perfectly okay. The message is there either way.
I believe we're all here for a reason. Mine is to make somebody's day a little lighter, a little happier. To leave a mark behind for the people who need it — proof that they're not alone, that others are struggling too, that being human and being imperfect are the same thing.
Originals & large canvas prints
Large original pieces are available by inquiry, starting around $1,500. Large canvas prints can also be made to order — tell me the size you're imagining and I'll come back with pricing.