Healing Art Gallery

I was already a painter when I came here 26 years ago to study graphic design at California State University, Chico.

In those first two years I earned a degree, made good friends, and had an interesting job offer for me when I finished my studies. I settled into a comfortable life and turned my attention back to painting.

I became an avid backpacker and I spent my free time exploring the magnificent landscapes in Northern California. I always had a camera and a sketchbook and I turned those experiences into paintings. Eventually I started taking my painting gear into the landscape and worked on location. 

Painting is a form of meditation for me. I start with some Tai Chi breathing, stress and anxiety leave my body. I slip into automatic and time melts. Even if the painting stinks, I make adjustments and keep going. 

In February I felt it in my body. It happened fast. In March I was diagnosed with neuroendocrine cancer on my lung and the outlook was not good. By the time I started chemo in April I figured I would never paint again. As I write this I am wrapping up my fourth round of chemo (12 weeks in). I have returned to my studio and one of the works in this show was painted after my diagnosis. 

Creating art is what I have always done and now painting helps me hold on to the person I have always been. My future is a question mark and I want to maintain the artist in me as long as I can. Take a couple of Tai Chi breaths, slide into automatic, make adjustments, and just keep going …

I started painting when I was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2001.

It was a way to deal with stress and depression that comes with a cancer diagnosis.

A therapist suggested I find a hobby to deal with my stress.

My daughters went to Michaels and found me some art supplies, and I started painting.

I’m an untrained artist, and I paint my feelings. Most of my work is from my imagination. I hope you will enjoy it.

We were married in 1964. In 1979, we bought a house quite a long walk from the Sacramento River. Over the next 40 years, the Sacramento River took a natural course and meandered closer and closer to our home. The river eventually found its way into our backyard.

My husband dealt with multiple myeloma for five years, and when he felt up to it, we would sit next to each other on the swing that overlooks the river. As we sat there, I always had my camera with me. Sitting there, next to the river, was always very relaxing. He enjoyed looking at and sharing my pictures as well, knowing all the pictures were taken right there on our property.

Two months after Doug died I was diagnosed with endometrial cancer. It is overwhelming at times, but with the support of friends and family I am making it. The nurses at Enloe Health Infusion Therapy have become family.

While I look out my back door at the beauty that the river brought into our backyard, it is obvious that this was a blessing. Photography is very relaxing, especially when sharing it with others to enjoy.

Throughout my teaching career, I tended to several young students whose lives were affected by cancer. They were such fighters and especially strong in their beliefs that the disease was only a temporary situation.

Together, we would create paintings that provided comfort to them and their families. I found that using many colors and letting them create whatever images they preferred helped them feel successful and positive about their days. Through the art therapy, they found an escape from the reality that cancer causes.

Through their efforts, I gained an understanding of how much they believed in living.

The painting lessons gave them a temporary respite from the medications, treatments and pain they were otherwise experiencing.

My experience with cancer also extends to my family. I was a caregiver for my mother-in-law. I would have loved to have done art therapy with her to relieve her stress and fear.

Her
appreciation of art might have helped her spirit and helped remove some of her fear.

Over the years, I’ve had students, friends and family members experience cancer. They’ve all shown such strength in their battles. Art therapy is such a focused, but relaxing way to put one’s thoughts on something positive. My hope is that everyone who sees my paintings finds peace, enjoyment, and positive moments and remembers the beautiful aspects of life.

My friend, Bobbi, is the push behind the desire to share my paintings with the patients and visitors of the Enloe Health Regional Cancer Center. Bobbi and I were friends for 45 years. More than a year ago, she was diagnosed with Stage 4 ovarian cancer. She went through chemotherapy and had extensive surgery. She passed away March 7, 2023. I went to her “Going Away Party” in early May. This is not the first time I have lost someone I love to cancer.

My first encounter with cancer was with my mother. She developed breast cancer when she was 50. This was in the early 80s when there was not a lot of research on breast cancer and few treatments available. She postponed getting it treated and by the time conventional methods were tried, it was too entrenched in her body. She died at 53. 

My second encounter was with a friend. Kathy was part of a small group of women who met once a month for dinner for many years. She did not go to the doctor until she had very serious symptoms. She was sent right to the hospital and died two weeks later as the cervical cancer she was diagnosed with was Stage 4 and had spread to major organs. 

A few years after that, my good friend and coworker, Irene, found breast cancer at its very early stage. She was treated and although it was not easy to go through, she survived. Fifteen years later, she found cancer again in the early stages, but it was a different form of breast cancer. She decided to have a mastectomy and reconstruction surgery at the same time. Today, she is cancer free, retired, and very active. She is my role model for how to survive cancer. 

I have painted for many years as a way of coping with grief. I started painting with watercolors just after my mother passed away. I continued through my father’s illness and ultimately his death at 64. I used painting to help heal the hole in my heart and my life when my younger sister, Tina, took her life in 2016. And I turned to it with a commitment, and an almost ferocity after the Camp Fire changed my life. The Camp Fire started on Tina’s birthday, Nov. 8, 2018. We evacuated for five weeks and came back to a house still standing but many neighbors’ houses gone and the whole area destroyed. The ugliness was devastating, and I painted beauty to counter it. I continued to paint through the fear and isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic as I worried about my far-flung family and friends.

I have no real formal training in painting. I paint what I like which are flowers, primarily roses. Flowers are ephemeral, beautiful, and yet functional, and an essential part of the cycle of life in nature. I take countless photos of nature and flowers everywhere I go and that is the basis of what I paint. I paint using transparent watercolors using a method called glazing. Glazing is laying down many layers of paint in different colors to get the richness that I want. I continue to paint, as a way to center myself. It calms me and allows my emotions and my thoughts to settle. Last year, I put my paintings together in a book to share with family and friends. To share my experiences with others and to let others know that art, any creative act really, can be healing and it can be done by anyone.

Finally, I have included Rose Series #7 which is a yellow rose with dark in the corners of the painting. I painted this at the height of the pandemic when I felt like darkness was encroaching, doom for the people on this planet and gloom for my outlook. But the rose remains bright, shining, and bringing light and hope into my life.

To purchase a painting, print or my book, please contact me at Lmfreemanwood@yahoo.com.

Ten years ago, I took this photo.

It was April 2013. The fourth and final surgery to rid my face of skin cancer.

Back then, I couldn’t have imagined that my photography would one day be with cancer patients, survivors, and their families, to inspire and uplift. I am humbled to present this body of work with the intention that it speaks to you, challenges you, and shows you that in our darkest of nights, our most powerful resource is revealed: our light.

My passion for photography arose from hiking on the weekends with my four children: Camille, Davis, Sophie, and Exie. I began seeing the world through their eyes and challenged myself to capture images that showcased the emotion of those moments. As an empty-nester, and one who tries to stay out of the sun, I began taking up an interest in night/astrophotography. Alone on the trail in the middle of the night, through all four seasons, I sit in the darkness and confront the fears that come from within. On the other side of those fears, courage and peace are revealed.

This peace fuels my adventures. Encounters with the Milky Way and Aurora Borealis, lightning and wildfires; rainstorms, rainbows, shade, moonlight, raging tides and the ever-changing seasons. As my body of work grows, it’s becoming apparent that these often-turbulent images reflect emotions; mine, and others. I understand that pain, uncertainty, and fear are some of the many weather patterns of our inner environment, though I hope that the way I capture them allows you to clearly see your own strengths more clearly and shine your light brighter.

Professionally, I’ve been a chiropractor for the past 22 years. Aligned Light Photography was born out of my passion for understanding and teaching alignment. In my personal life, I’ve noticed that after some of my hardest and darkest periods, the skin cancer would manifest. I have made peace with the scars on my face, and subsequent scar over my heart. We all have scars, some worn on the outside, and some on the inside. Mine are a daily reminder of how destruction can ultimately lead to renewal, and rebirth. Just as a rainbow requires a storm. Just as starlight demands the darkness.

Each of these images are single captures, no stacking or composites, representing that magical moment when time and light merge. It is my hope that these images help you feel the power that exists on the other side of suffering and renewal, where we are always whole.

— Bradley Foster

My focus in art is printmaking, more specifically the etching process. Political satire, social comment, science fiction, and abstract environments are expressed through whimsy and surrealism. Much of my work is complex and technically detailed, a reaction to the chaos and change in the world around us.

My primary influences are M.C. Escher, Salvador Dali, Rene Magritte and Giorgio de Chirico. I was very fortunate to spend time with Escher, in Holland in 1970, shortly before his death. A visit to his studio was most inspirational, particularly as he discussed and revealed his printmaking techniques. Escher’s unsurpassed craft and vision helped transform my work.

Born in Southern California but raised in Chico, I have been influenced by my education in the department of art at California State University, Chico. My three mentors, Dr. Janet E. Turner, Marion Austin Epting, and Brian Paulsen, have helped guide and shape my approach to printmaking. I served as a graduate teaching assistant to Dr. Janet Turner in the early ’70s. Professor Epting has been a friend and inspiration since he joined the department in 1969, always being very generous with his techniques and advice.

Brian’s influence can be seen in my fascination with juxtaposed images which, when put together, create a new reality. At present, I am a volunteer employee at CSU, Chico, and assist students in the print lab and work with Professor Eileen MacDonald, who has been an inspiration to me with her incredible knowledge of printmaking, her talent, and her unending enthusiasm for her students.

I’ve had many bouts with skin cancer and many surgeries to remove basal and Squamish cells in areas of my face, ears, and scalp. Realizing my own mortality, I started using less surreal imagery and more imagery of pleasant things like butterflies, flowers, and angels.

My wife and I lost our daughter to glioblastoma. Our beloved Stacie Denise Boone passed away only after nine months from the time she was diagnosed. We are still trying to survive that.

I, like everybody, look forward to a day when cancer is finally cured.

— Michael Halldorson

My art career began in Ohio in the late 1960s after I left my job with United Airlines to raise my children and manage our household as a stay-at-home mom. What started out as a way to relax and challenge myself by trying out new types of painting quickly became a successful supplemental source of income for our household and a source of my own personal enjoyment.

Over the last 60 years, I have learned new styles and mediums of painting through experimentation and the occasional workshop with other artists. I started with Tole painting, which is decorative painting on tin and wooden objects and furniture. It was so popular with my friends and family that I started selling my work in a local shop. I could not paint fast enough to keep up with the orders. A patron of my work eventually asked me to paint an entire wall of a room in her house, so murals were added to my skillset.

When we moved to Michigan in the mid 1970s, I needed something new to try and started painting on clothing, which was extremely popular at the time. Over the next two decades, I continued teaching myself new ways to paint and work with multiple medias, selling all of my creations out of my studio and through local shops and designers.

In the mid 1990s, I finally turned my attention to painting on canvas, which is what you see represented here. It has become the most enjoyable artistic endeavor for me yet, partially because I mostly do it for my own personal enjoyment.

I have seen three nieces and numerous close friends go through the struggles of battling cancer, so I am honored to be able to share my work here for others to enjoy during that struggle, as an extension of my other volunteer work for the Cancer Society.

— Connie Chapman

My introduction to art was in junior high school. My high school did not have an art program, but an artist at my after-school job got me interested in oils. Then art was put aside for college, the army, graduate school and work.

I taught organic chemistry at California State University, Chico, for 29 years. During this time, Paul Feldhaus of the art department contacted me to answer his chemistry questions, and he taught me the art of lithography.

Seven years ago, I was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. After chemotherapy treatment, it was discovered that I had a T-cell induced cancer in my lungs. Treatment for both cancers was successful, and I am now in remission. Five years ago, I suffered a stroke, which left me weaker on my right side and using a walker for mobility.

After the cancer diagnoses, Ouida, my wife of 65 years, and I quit traveling. I took up pastels and acrylics. After the stroke, I could barely handle a pencil. Physical therapy brought me to the point where I could use watercolors. I have been using this medium for the last two years. Most of my work is landscapes and seascapes, especially outback Australia, where Ouida and I spent two years while I was on sabbatical. My other subjects are scenes of Italy, which we have visited four times, and the hills of Northern California.

Art has always been a part of my life, but since my cancer and stroke, it has been my lifeline. Painting each day is my therapy, even if they are failures. The doing is what is important.

— Rod Quacchia

The only thing that doesn’t change is change itself. My paintings are a perfect example of this statement. I started painting in 1973. I was motivated by primitive paintings I had seen exhibited in a museum. These were of 17th and 18th century untrained artists representing all walks of life. These often-spontaneous creations were a significant representation of America’s past life. The simplicity of the paintings encouraged me to try to duplicate this art form. Looking back in time, I think it implicitly expressed my own dreams and aspirations.

To this day, I have never received any formal painting instruction. I have learned through books and observation of other artists’ paintings. I have never wanted or sought formal training. I feared it would change my natural instincts and artistic spontaneity in the creation of my works. To me this was freedom of expression.

Following my attempt at primitive paintings, I decided to paint in a more realistic way. Instead of painting from imagination, I started using photographs for accuracy. I discovered I could duplicate the reality of a photo painted on my canvas, wood or other surfaces. Eventually, I felt I was merely competing with photos for accuracy and not putting any sort of emotional or natural interpretation in my artwork. The experience did give me a more acute sense of visualization. I had developed a new appreciation of how I see the world.

My next stage of development was motivated by my study of 18th century French artists of the impressionism era. Names of famous artists such as Monet, Manet, Renoir, Cezanne, Van Gogh and many others invaded my thinking. I realized that art does not need to look exactly like what you see but needs to be interpreted by how you feel as well.

As I’ve aged in real and artistic life, I have felt a need to free myself from the bondage of my painting experiences. Abstract painting has become my current genre. I no longer feel compelled to paint what I see. I now paint in a state of mind unfettered by conventional artistic norms.

About the Artist

In 2009 due to his wife’s diagnosis of cancer, Ray moved to Chico, to seek treatment for her at Enloe Regional Cancer Center. Painting took on an importance in his life as a way to relieve some of the stress of living each day as the caretaker for a spouse with cancer. Through art he found one can truly live for the moment and thus find internal peace. Inquiries regarding purchase of paintings exhibited can be made at raymondeastman@comcast.net or by phone at 530-514-6224.

In 2008, who would have ever thought that one painting would open the door to showing my art at the Enloe Healing Art Gallery? It is all because of my beautiful baby sister. As she was having one of her chemotherapy appointments, I painted her a picture of a ballerina dancing.

I called it “Victory Over Cancer.” I texted her the picture. She showed it to one of the nurses. That opened the door to a whole new world. Since that time, I have been painting and using the “God-given gift” to bless others.

I hate cancer! I lost my beautiful baby sister after one year of battling liver, lung and brain cancer. She was fun, loving, kind and full of zest. We became very close in the last year of her life. I wanted to make as many memories as possible. We had art projects we did together. We said prayers of thanksgiving on our drive to her chemo appointments. We shared many laughs and crazy inside jokes.

I helped in the care of my grandmother. She was a survivor of colon cancer. I cared for my daddy. He had liver cancer. My brother-in-law had a tumor on his jaw the size of a grapefruit. The doctors never had much hope for him, but through great prayer, we watched as the chemo shrank the tumor from his very first treatment. It was incredible. He has been cancer free for four years now. God is so good.

Without any lessons, but a God-given gift, I sit with paint brush in hand. I never know what is going to flow from the fingertips — bold, bright colors to baby pastels. How about cheerful sunflowers to brighten one’s day? Or a moonlit evening on your wall to display? I am inspired by each new stroke as my brush dances across the canvas to create fresh new paintings: sunrise, starry skies, angels, moonlit nights. My goal is to be able to bring joy to one’s heart and beauty to one’s wall.

Painting has been very therapeutic for me. All because of one simple painting I painted for my baby sister.

I dedicate the painting, Victory Over Cancer, and this show to my sister, Sandra Lynn Ponciano (Sally).

Find me on Facebook at LQ Eccentric Art.

The Banners of Hope quilts were first installed at the Enloe Regional Cancer Center in 2010 to lift spirits and create a healing environment. First envisioned by Judith K. Johnson, a cancer survivor and former patient of the Cancer Center, these pieces were lovingly crafted by quilters throughout the North State. The quilts featured here are new submissions, and they represent the next generation of Banners of Hope.

If you or someone you know is interested in submitting a quilt, please contact Rebecca Senoglu, the Cancer Support Program Coordinator, at 530-332-3856 or rebecca.senoglu@enloe.org.

Finding the Way

by Asya Lesly
Artist statement: Like so many people, I felt lost when I found out that I had cancer.

My banner shows that many birds provide great inspiration. The ability to find their way is crucial for survival.

The Steller’s jay may travel to lower elevations in the winter, while the tiny Rufous hummingbird travels between Canada and Mexico.

Pink Warrior

by Asya Lesly
Artist statement: The warrior pose requires balance, strength and flexibility.

May all those who are fighting cancer have all three. I don’t like to think of myself as a cancer survivor, but as a cancer ninja warrior princess with battle scars to prove it.

New Life Means Hope

by Judy Petrucelli (design) and Connie Adams (quilting)
Judy’s statement: I participated in the first Banners of Hope project with Judy Johnson as a member of Annie’s Star Quilt Guild. I have been through cancer with my daughter and my husband. The many times I went to Enloe Regional Cancer Center with my husband for cancer treatment, I so enjoyed the banners.

Now I am starting my own journey of cancer treatment. Working on a Banners of Hope is an inspiration to me, and I hope, others.

As we go through the treatment process, all we have is hope. There are no guarantees. Rebirth represents hope to me.

The Promise of Spring

by Donna Greenwald
Artist statement: Lilacs are a sure sign that spring and new life is just around the corner.

This piece will always remind me of my dear friend Judy Johnson, who lost her battle to cancer in the summer of 2020.

She lives on in the hearts and minds of her children, grandchildren, and many friends.

Butterfly Fancy

by Missie Carpenter
Artist statement: Cancer has touched, and taken, many people in my life.

Undergoing treatment is fraught with many emotions. The power of positivity cannot be understated.

Who can deny the positive joy of spotting a butterfly in flight?

There’s Always Hope

by Char Miller
Artist statement: Cancer has touched our family, as it has many friends and families. My brother, Bob, and best friend, Linda, were lost too soon, and also my mother-in-law, Ann, whom I never had the chance to meet.

Connie Adams, who quilted this banner, and I picked a puzzle design because it reminded us of the puzzle table in the waiting area. The puzzles helped family and friends because puzzles bring people together.

Journey to Hope

by B.G. Crocker
Artist statement: My mom and grandma both battled breast cancer. A grandfather had stomach cancer; one of my uncles had bone cancer. My sister died from skin cancer. These beautiful people each displayed three characteristics throughout their journey. They had courage to face their diagnosis, strength during treatment and hope for a better tomorrow.

Their courage, strength and hope inspire me daily.

Light at the End of the Tunnel

by Grace Crocker
Artist statement: “You have cancer.” These are very scary words to hear. My mother had breast cancer, now I had it! Would my three daughters inherit the gene? Thankfully, not.

I felt like I was in a dark place with no way out. Loved ones and medical personnel cared for and encouraged me, but I was headed into a long, dark tunnel. Cancer does that to you.

But time and good care changed things. Soon I was headed for the “light at the end of the tunnel.” Thankfully, that tunnel is now in the past, and I am enjoying that light. This quilt was made to commemorate my journey and the journey of many others as well.