Hospital puts its seniors’ art on display
They are old and they are sick and they can no longer look after themselves. But one goal of a pilot project in which patients on the geriatric wards at the Jewish General Hospital worked with an art therapist in painting workshops was to make them aware of what they can do, despite their diminished abilities, and not to focus on what they can’t.
Painting is the vehicle but the twice-weekly workshops held from September through December were, more than anything, about helping people to re-enter a society from which they have come to feel excluded because of age and frailty. Another of the project’s goals is to humanize care, which in acute-care hospitals can be focused more on technology and less on the person.
“Painting is a vector to humanize care, for the person to be aware of abilities he has, and to help with rehabilitation,” said Dr. Olivier Beauchet of the hospital’s Division of Geriatrics and director of McGill’s Centre of Excellence on Aging and Chronic Disease, based at the Jewish General.
A vernissage of close to 90 8-by8-inch canvases created by about 30 patients during the Geriatric Inclusive Art Painting Workshop Project, as the pilot project is known, will be held Tuesday beginning at 5:30 p.m. in Carrefour Lea Polansky of the hospital’s Pavilion K at 5767 Legaré St., in the food court area. It’s open to the public.
Participants were never asked to paint anything specific but, rather, did what they had the capacity to do, explained Samantha Remondière, the art therapist with the project. “Our role is to accompany them, but never to ask them to do something that would put them in a situation in which they would fail,” she said.
Because many of the patients have memory deficits, the paintings, done in acrylic, four colours per session, were all completed in a single session. “They remember, in the moment, that they like what they’re doing and also that they feel better when they’re there,” she said.
“We are not there to teach them to paint but, rather, to look for what people have inside themselves, at who they were. In putting paint to canvas, they feel good and they become more self-confident; they forget whatever anguish there is in their lives. They are able to step away from their illness, from the care they need.”
“I see each of them as a whole person. They can paint and, meanwhile, we work on their emotional well-being. As they feel better, they communicate more and more effectively.”
Antonio Licursi, whose 91-yearold father, Arnaldo Licursi, spent two months at the Jewish General last fall, said the workshop took his father’s mind “out of his closed world as he opened up and expressed his hidden talent with a confidence that shouted ‘Hello, I can still do it!’ He still remembers Samantha as an angel who gives colour to life.”
Some canvases are representational and other canvases are more figurative; if some appear primitive at first glance, most tell stories, said Remondière, and part of her work is to help coax those stories from participants.
“Sometimes we are surprised,” said Beauchet. “There are those who don’t communicate who might not have known their capacity or might have forgotten it.”
Another thing: The workshops demonstrate to the health professionals treating these patients and to their own families that they are able to paint and create something. “It changes one’s vision of a person. You might have an impression that they can’t do anything,” Remondière said, but the paintings show otherwise. As for the participants, “they are excited — and they are proud.”
Among some patients, improvements in behaviour and affect were apparent, she said, with people smiling and talking more to each other. “It is so gratifying to see.” There can also be gains in autonomy: Holding a paint brush, for instance, can help someone to hold a spoon and eat on her own rather than being fed.
The project is also slated to have a research component, in which the effects of these painting workshops on health are studied, said Beauchet. They have shown to be a rehabilitation tool, he said, that doing these workshops reduced the length of hospital stays in the geriatric population and also reduced mortality among people with Alzheimer’s disease in longterm care.
In addition to the efforts of Beauchet and Remondière, the exhibition was made possible by the Division of Geriatric Medicine of the hospital’s Department of Medicine, Uyen Doan, a fellow in geriatric medicine, the Jewish General Hospital, and a $12,000 grant from the Fondation de Bienfaisance T.A. Saint-Germain.