Images of resistance: A photonarrative enquiry into the meanings of personal artwork for people living with cancer (original) (raw)
Related papers
Creativity Research Journal, 2008
This study explored the meanings, inspirations and subjective significance of personal artwork created as a leisure activity by women living with cancer. A convenience sample of twelve women aged between 23-74 years participated in semi-structured interviews. Participants were living in various stages of the cancer trajectory, and engaged in several forms of visual art-making. They submitted examples of their artwork by photograph and then participated in semi-structured interviews. From a phenomenological analysis, the authors inferred a number of themes. Participants perceived a few pieces, made during chemotherapy, as expressing deeper feelings about cancer in symbolic terms. More prevalent in participants' accounts were references to their artwork as a sensuous pleasure, and its confirmation of their ongoing capability, personal continuity and social connectedness. Participants acknowledged ongoing loss and difficulties related to cancer. However, each piece of art offered a measure of resistance against the psychologically and socially disruptive effects of cancer. The pre-interview photography activity was helpful for empowering participants in the interview, and for stimulating detailed memories and associations.
The Arts in Psychotherapy, 2007
This qualitative study examined accounts of women diagnosed with cancer who engaged regularly in art as a leisure activity. The objective was to explore participants' experiences of cancer and their views about the contribution of artmaking to their subjective well-being. The study was based on the principles of interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). A convenience sample of twelve women aged between 23-74 years participated in semi-structured interviews, and their accounts were analysed thematically. Participants described a range of ongoing difficulties associated with cancer such as fear for the future, pain, sleeplessness, role loss, activity restriction, reduced self-confidence and altered social relationships. They described art-making as supporting subjective well-being in four major ways.
The Journal of Positive Psychology, 2007
Why do some women turn to creative art-making after a diagnosis of cancer? Eleven women provided qualitative accounts that were analyzed following guidelines for interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). Some described taking up artistic leisure activities initially in order to manage emotional distress. Others emphasized their need for positive well-being, taking up art to experience achievement and satisfaction, to regain a positive identity, and to normalize family dynamics in the context of living with cancer. Participants' turn to art-making was facilitated by biographical and contextual factors, including pre-existing craft skills, long-standing personal values and coping philosophies, family role models for managing adversity, and the supportive encouragement of family and friends. Other research has acknowledged that positive lifestyle change and post-traumatic growth can occur after a cancer diagnosis, and this study reveals a multi-faceted process. The findings suggest a need for further research into the experiences that facilitate positive lifestyle change and subjective well-being among people who are living with cancer.
The role of art-making in identity maintenance: case studies of people living with cancer
European Journal of Cancer Care, 2006
The aim of this qualitative research was to understand why some people with cancer take up art as a leisure activity, and how visual art-making in daily life might support identity maintenance/ reconstruction. The study forms part of a larger project with people who view art-making as a resource for living with chronic illness. In order to provide a detailed, holistic analysis, the paper focuses on the accounts and artwork of three participants, two women (aged 47 and 59) each with breast cancer, and a man (aged 51) with stomach and lung cancer. The participants turned to art after a process of reflection but did not necessarily reject their pre-illness lifestyles or selves. Rather, art-making afforded many opportunities to retain familiar personal and social identities, and to resist being dominated by labels related to their illness. A practical implication is that people coping with cancer may need not only cognitive and emotional support, but opportunities to find meaningful activities. Such activities can be understood to have a powerful role in maintaining a familiar, positive identity in cancer, and providing a resource for coping.
European Journal of Oncology Nursing, 2012
Purpose: The aim of this feasibility study was two-fold: i) develop lifelike torsos of two breast cancer survivors using innovative sculpting material and; ii) shed light on the meaning women give to the experience of breast cancer after viewing their sculpted torsos. Methods: This collaborative initiative between nurse researchers and artists was situated within phenomenological inquiry. Two breast cancer survivors shared their bodies, as models, and stories of their cancer journey and the experience of modeling to create life-sized torsos of their bodies. Key results: The participants articulated embodied knowing as each shared experiences of connectedness and relationship which culminated in the emergence of four core themes: The Landscape of Breast in Cancer; Red Shoes: The Re-claiming of Self; Liberation: towards an embodied self; and, Scars: Re-authoring Life. Conclusions: Active engagement in art through the use of one's body has the potential to open the door to healing, the generation of meaning and a reaffirmation of self.
2017
Description of the Project Life-threatening illness can be sufficiently traumatic to shatter one's beliefs about self, others, and the world. This disruption can trigger an instinctive search for meaning. Research highlights that how individuals respond postadversity can make the difference between experiencing existential angst and posttraumatic stress or existential and posttraumatic growth. This chapbook presents some of the findings of a pilot study situated in a cancer care centre and details the impact of creative arts therapy on the experiences of women living through breast cancer. Women were interviewed about their experiences making art, many for the first time. Findings are presented in the form of found poems (excerpts from interviews reframed as poetry) along with an illustrative example of their artwork. Found poems are a richer, more accessible, meaningful, and potent evocation of the themes than traditional analysis. Poetry allows the reader to access deeper insights and understandings of the texture and meaning of existential and posttraumatic growth, and how art-making can provide a safe, dynamic context for women with breast cancer to reflect on profound personal changes and to re-story losses through creative arts practices.
Breastless Landscape: An arts-based enquiry into my lived experience of breast cancer
Abstract This enquiry is grounded in my own personal experience of breast cancer. I experienced the loss of my breast, not only as a change to the shape and feel of my physical body but also in the way I understood and expressed myself as a woman. Still largely based on the bio-medical paradigm, the medical system in Australia encourages women to have a breast reconstruction at the same time, or soon after, their mastectomy in order to finalise their treatment and ensure they get back to “normal” as soon as possible. This enquiry explores how I used creative arts to find meaning in my lived experience of breast cancer; in particular, how I made sense of my changed body, came to a decision to not have a breast reconstruction, and explored how to live as a one-breasted woman. Using creative arts I attempted to speak from my body. Situated within a review of different discourses of the body, my enquiry centres on an understanding of the feminist phenomenological body as a continuously forming shape-shifting entity intermingled and co-constructed with the social and natural world. Working alone and alongside other women, I undertook numerous enquiry cycles using a range of different art modalities, with a particular focus on sensory knowing formed through relationship with the art materials. Touch provided the bridge between my experiencing, emotion,and movement into art-making, allowing me to heighten my sensory awareness thus providing the space for new knowing to arise within my body. Using a fusion of different modalities, my enquiry centred on two key images. One image created from my painted body allowed me to explore existential issues of mortality and the meaning of life, while the pink lady image provoked me to explore my feelings of anger, vulnerability, and shame. Through these images I discovered that a particular artwork is able to hold the complexity of lived experience. My own arts based exploration of my breast cancer experience provides a method for other women to follow, it will inform my own arts based practice, provides a template for arts based groupwork, and contributes to the understanding of women’s lived experience of breast cancer that can in influence the support provided by family, friends, and health services.
Art as a catalyst for resilience: Women artists with life-threatening illness
2013
This phenomenological inquiry focused on the experiences of 12 professional women artists diagnosed with major medical illnesses, mostly cancer. Data from three in-depth interviews with each participant indicated that their beliefs, personal strengths, learned skills, and lived experiences were fundamental to their commitment to art as a way of life. The overarching question of whether long-term involvement in creative practices acted as a catalyst for resilience during and after treatments became the seminal exploration in this study. Data analysis used methods for qualitative research devised by Moustakas (1994), Giorgi (1985), and Forinash (2012), and a conversational approach in interviews suggested by Kavale and Brinkmann (2009). Findings suggest that uniquely learned artistic skills and an evolved creative process involving uncertainty, risk-taking, experimentation, flexibility, open-mindedness, determination, and perseverance served these artists well when they faced life-threatening illnesses. Their creative endeavors gave them a sense of direction, identity, and agency based on their commitment, beliefs, and intentions. These artists were proactive in their artwork and in dealing with diagnoses and treatment options even as their priorities and energies shifted to care and healing. Visual communication let them give voice to personal expression and acts of imagination that held essential purpose and meaning. The findings suggest that these artists had art practices that were life-affirming and that art-making for them was evidence of vitality. Although art-making changed during acute illness, all participants resumed art practices, with adjustments, during and after treatments. Most participants engaged in new or changed forms of expression. Art experiences ART AS A CATALYST 13 opened possibilities for renewal in health as well as in ill health. The study demonstrated that the creative process, accessed through art-making by these artists, can have a therapeutic effect, a placebo effect, with life resumed or at the end of life. This investigation suggests that physicians, clinicians, healthcare workers, and creative art therapists could engage and encourage their patients in creative endeavors that offer possible placebo effects while accompanying them through illness and assisting in ways of psychological healing that are age-old.