'That is what I needed': Exeter Hospital health art class helps navigate cancer journey
EXETER — Art heals the soul, but cancer patients who participated in the Healing Art class at Exeter Hospital say it helps with their other healing processes, too.
The amateur artists are all patients at Exeter Hospital's Center for Cancer Care who decided to take part in the class offered by Kathleen Robbins. She has taught art therapy at Exeter Hospital for more than 17 years. The class created a series of six water lily paintings using some of the supplies that are used in cancer treatment.
In addition to her work at Exeter Hospital, Robbins is a professional landscape and abstract artist who has a studio in The Button Factory in Portsmouth.
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"Seventeen years ago, Exeter Hospital was looking for someone to teach art therapy," Robbins said. "I had just lost a sister to breast cancer. She was in her 30s. I was in graduate school. I did my thesis on grief, transitioning and anger, and dedicated it to my sister. I decided to go for the job even if it was just to help them get a program started. I am still here. I love this so much and I still feel I am still honoring my sister by doing it."
The water lilies project was a six-week group effort. Each canvas was rotated from one artist to the next, so everyone had a hand in creating each piece.
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The paintings all began with special foam pieces of various shapes. The pieces were the "negatives" cut out of molds of heavy metal blocks used to reduce the amount of radiation received by non-targeted healthy tissue.
"They are the representations of both the cancer being killed by radiation, leading to a cure, and they tell the stories of a patient's cancer journey," Robbins said. "I noticed the pieces in the radiation room, in a chest of tools. There was a wastepaper basket of shapes, so I asked if I could have them. Sometimes I see things and find they are intriguing."
The group chose pieces of foam that appealed to them, dipping them in dark blue paint to create "stamps" which were applied to the canvases. A watercolor wash was added next.
The class drew water lilies on stencil paper, layering the cut-out stencils over their already created base, rotating around the room. Finally the stencils were painted as water lilies and pads.
"The paintings represent the cancer journey, transformed through the healing and recovery represented by the lily pads and flowers," Robbins said. "The project is meant to inspire them, to help promote relaxation. They were exhibited in a hall of the hospital."
Barrington resident Stefanie Diamond, 72, took the class. She said it did wonderful things for her "body and soul."
"I am a retired physician's assistant," said Diamond. "I came in to the hospital for treatment of multiple myeloma, a blood and bone cancer, the second most common type of that cancer. Art was always a big part of my life and when I heard about the class, offered as a complementary treatment, I signed up. I think art takes you out of your head and puts you in the moment, and that is what I needed. Sometimes you are in treatment for hours, so I had actually started drawing and painting a bit. Kathleen would critique my work, offer suggestions and when she told me about the class, I was in."
Diamond said the group project produced six paintings, and they all had a part in each one.
"It didn't really matter if you were good or not," she said. "You were creating, and it felt good. I think they all ended up very beautiful. It took us out of our own isolation. We interacted with each other and with her. You can't imagine how good that felt to all of us going through this cancer journey. We talked, complained to each other, something we try not to do with our families. We lost one member and that was hard, but we had each other. It was all kinds of therapy."