By encouraging people to upload paintings, poems, writing or photography to the online platform, Making Art Personal hopes to share the experiences of those going through their cancer journey.
The website has been created by the Michele Angelo Petrone Foundation (formally MAP), which was formed as a lasting legacy to its founder, Michele Petrone, who was a professional artist and a cancer sufferer.
Michele sadly died in 2007, but during his battle with cancer he documented his journey using art to express his feelings and encouraged others to do the same.
The organisation promotes arts in health and offers an understanding for people affected by life-threatening illness, in particular cancer. It describes itself as the “21st century version of Michele’s workshops.”
Trisha Stone is the development coordinator for Making Art Personal and firmly believes that Michele would have utilised the internet to share his paintings: “He would have absolutely gone in this direction, it was the most logical place to go,” she said.
Trisha considers the site to be an ‘online arts community’, “a place where you can upload work, comment and share,” she continued.
The website states: “We know how isolated you can feel with your illness even when you have close families and more so if you are on your own. Some family members and carers can find it difficult when someone they are close to is diagnosed with cancer… we do not ask you to shy away from difficult topics but we hope that through sharing you will find a place on Making Art Personal to help ease your journey.”
Some very powerful pieces of art have already been submitted to the site. Some are anonymous, whereas other contributors are happy to be identified.
Pieta has uploaded her picture of a multicoloured butterfly. She writes: “I felt it was an opportunity to mess about with paint, and I found myself playing with these little images on the wings over the wings and it was very satisfying. A lot of the symbols on one side are repeated on the other, with some slight differences.”
Pieta’s husband died from cancer and she says he isolated himself during his treatment: “It was his way of dealing with his cancer. He was very angry. He didn’t want anybody to know, not his friends, his family or the children, who were six and nine. For me that was not the way I function. I found ways of talking with the children about illness and death at bedtime, in story terms, answering their questions when they felt ready to ask them.”
Sally is another contributor who has submitted a painting to the online community. She has drawn a tree of two halves to explain how she sees her life with cancer. She writes: “This tree symbolises me because I can go from one extreme to the other … the left-hand side, very importantly, is not rooted. Its roots have dried up, so that side is dying. The other side is living; the trunk green, alive growing leaves.”
The plan initially is for people affected by cancer to submit paintings, drawings and creative writing to the website – this could be patients, carers family or friends. But in the future, the organisation hopes to open the site to people suffering with other medical conditions too, aswell as offering the facility to upload film and music.
Making Art Personal is in the early stages of developing an e-learning section of the site. Trisha told ehospice:“The website is still in development and the Try it! section will include multi-media e-learning opportunities to get you started even if you have not picked up a brush, pen or camera in years.”
Michele’s artwork was often used by health organisations and medical institutions across the UK for education purposes and he ran numerous workshops during his lifetime, for both patients and care staff.
He also spent time in hospices; often for a prolonged period as a resident artist.
One of Michele’s collections,The Emotional Cancer Journey, was most recently exhibited at St Christopher’s Hospice in Sydenham, London.
Gini Lawson has been an art therapist for seven years at St Christopher’s and has seen first-hand the benefits of using art with patients. “We offer individual sessions, family sessions and group sessions here at the hospice or in the community. We work with people at the bedside if necessary,” she told ehospice.
Gini is one of a team offering a range of different artistic mediums depending on the individual, including painting, drawing, iPad art, photography, film, ceramics, textiles and puppetry.
So why is art therapy so important?
“Sometimes feelings and experiences are difficult to put into words,“Gini said. “The arts can help people to express themselves and this can ease distress and isolation. The arts can help people to relate to and connect with others, and can consequentially improve relationships. It enables a way of connecting to the essence of something, and this can bring a huge amount of relief and release as people can make sense of things for themselves.”
The arts take on a particular poignancy within the hospice environment, according to Gini: “We all have a need to be remembered, and the arts help people to meet this need through creating very personal art objects as lasting legacies. It gives people an opportunity to reclaim what may have been lost through illness, such as control, freedom, independence, even identity. In collaboration with the wider multidisciplinary team, the arts can contribute towards effective pain management whether this is physical, emotional, social or spiritual.”
Making Art Personal is keen to hear from any organisation or individual who would like to get involved in growing this online arts community as well as those who would like to share their work.
You can share your artwork on the Making Art Personal website, or on the Facebook or Twitter pages.
Click here to see a gallery of further images from the Making Art Personal website.
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