Art Therapy

    
     I've started painting again - with varying and sometimes surprising results.  

Self-portrait: Diagnosis

     As a right-handed person working with my left hand, the results are bound  to be different than my pre-ALS paintings, and I find myself using a lot of gesso and titanium white to blot out the more egregious "differences."  But I am struck by the similarities: my use of color is similar, my brush action, my combinations of broken-field texture with large flat areas, the latter-day quasi-impressionism that makes the viewer's eye do the

work and provide the details.

     Most surprising is the emotion revealed in some of my new pieces.  My husband says they are great -- and they scare him to bits.
     I'm working on two series of self-portraits. One, the "scare to bits" group, is a visual examination of my reaction to ALS.  They are very personal and, I am surprised to see, pretty powerful.
     The "Diagnosis" self-portrait above is a example

     The second group is a "bucket list" series, fun, somewhat frivolous paintings of 

Self-portrait with Race Day Hat:
Bucket List #1

myself in settings and  activities on my gotta-do list.  They are much more cheerful in color and mood, but they 're still pretty strong personal statements: I really, really want to visit these places and do these things!  (I have long wanted, for example, to go to a major horse race, wear a big frou-frou hat, the whole nine yards.  So my daughter and I, I hope, are going to opening weekend at Saratoga next summer --. big brim, flowers, feathers and all!)
        The very best thing about these paintings, fun or serious, art or not, lies in the doing.  Pushing paint around, playing with color, getting myself all splattered, even cleaning my brushes provide great physical therapy.  And trying to give visual voice to my often chaotic thoughts is turning out to be the best psychological and spiritual therapy I could ever devise.
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      I would really like to hear from other PALS artists.  How do you fill your creative needs?  How has your approach changed as the disease progresses?  Does art provide satisfaction? Frustration? Release?  What do you create?  Let's get a good discussion going....

Self-portrait with Hands



Self-portrait with Glacier:
Bucket List #3