Bring healing art to kids in medical crisis

A mother is daydreaming of far away places as she waits for the results of her sick child’s tests.  With some consideration, she picks up a graphite pencil and draws a cluster of ten palm trees on a handmade canvas made of donated foam core painted with primer.  Other members in the room include a teenage boy, parents of an isolated child and two children from another family on the hospital floor.  Most everyone around the table is painting on this day.  The mother drawing the tree had never painted before.  She was nervous, unsure she could transfer what she had drawn with paint.  With encouragement and a pale acrylic yellow paint, she adds the glow of the sun in the corner and then a tree and another.  The resulting effort knocks our collective socks off.  Soon after, on another sunny afternoon, she is eagerly at the table ready to draw.  This time, she uses Crayola crayons to create a entire tropical scene.  Following that, she starts a second painting.  This one is tropical in theme with a slightly more sophisticated composition.  Her palm trees are leaning towards the light and are much more dynamic.  White highlights are added to the trunks of the trees and the crests of the waves.  More detail is added to the sky.  Her progress is already notable.  On Friday evening, she returned to the art table wanting to create a Spirit House the shape of a Tiki Hut, like the ones from her homeland.  Spirit Houses are one of the many engaging projects CHAP offers the families we serve.  Her house becomes a transport, away from the hospital smells and sounds, to a distant land filled with palm trees and white sandy beaches.  She works hard to add a front porch.  I began to notice that her house design mimics the crayon landscape from a few days ago.  The next day, I arrive to an art room that is already joyously animated, except for the mother who painted the trees.  She is sitting in the corner, gazing out of the window, looking lost.  I could feel her sadness the moment I saw her.  The news was grim.  She was taking her precious child back to the island to die, nothing more could be done.  She had come to the art room to finish her painting to take home with her as a physical reminder of her child and all of the “wonderful people that treated me like family”.

Links:

• Children's Healing Art Project