Art, Memory & Healing

Ann Kuckelman Cobb Gladiolus

Art is an opportunity to look more deeply—at the world, at oneself.  To touch the intangible, to envision the invisible, to plumb the unknown.  Art can be a way of healing.  It is a symbolic language that has the ability to quiet the rational mind and give free rein to the creative self. 

At age 40, after many years of wanting to make art, I took the leap by enrolling in a drawing class at the local community arts center.  I was inspired in part by the life and work of Elizabeth Layton, a woman in her 70’s who freed herself from a lifetime of deep depression by learning and practicing contour drawing.  I decided that if she could do it, maybe I could also learn contour drawing, a method that tricks the mind out of a stereotypical conception of the thing being drawn.  So I contacted Elizabeth Layton, who generously met with me in her home, then corresponded with me by letter for a number of years, constantly encouraging me to continue to pursue my understanding of life and the world through making art. 

Following the completion of the drawing class, I enrolled in a basic watercolor class, and found the teacher, Diana, so knowledgeable and encouraging that I asked if she would give me private lessons.  Fortunately, she said yes, and I had the marvelous opportunity of driving once a week to her home in the country, where we would work seriously on learning watercolor, but would also become great friends.  The first lesson she planned for me was to draw and paint a gladiolus.  Her husband, Arnold, had volunteered to buy a gladiolus stem and bring it home for us as a model.  I remember being astonished that the painting looked quite a bit like the real thing!  And the pleasure of that was reinforced by Arnold, who, at the end of the session, asked to purchase that modest first effort. 

The next project I undertook with Diana’s encouragement was a series of large watercolors of my mother, depicting the trajectory of her memory loss.  While these three pieces were not particularly skilled, to me they captured the essence of how I experienced a terrible loss over an extended period of time during which my warm, caring, fun loving mother gradually faded away.  Doing these images was an exercise of love.  It allowed me to symbolize my grief in a tangible way, and somehow helped me to continue to feel connected to the loving mother I knew as a child and young adult.