Assisted by the staff of River House, a supported residential facility within Bethlem Royal Hospital in London where he lived for a long time, Albert carefully guards his identity and personal history. He does not wish for his medical background or biographical details to overshadow his work or shape its interpretation. Of his life, he says only that it has been difficult.
Although he has drawn continuously since childhood, Albert does not consider himself an artist. His family offered no encouragement for this practice, even as one of his brothers came to be recognized as a gifted poet.
His large-scale pencil drawings present meticulously rendered visions of buildings, houses, and imaginary architectural structures. Executed with obsessive precision, they convey a powerful sense of order and control. Albert firmly rejects any mystical reading of his work. Contrary to suggestions made by some commentators, he insists that his images are not about incarceration or confinement. Rather, he describes them as a form of meditation, even relief. If they represent anything, he explains, they depict ideal places — spaces in which he would wish to live, where walls and fences function less as barriers than as forms of protection.
Albert says that he feels “connected” when he draws. He does not sign his works, yet he keeps them constantly by his side, safe-guarding them with quiet determination.