Art Therapy for Stroke Survivors

One of the things that has kept me busy over the summer is my involvement in an exhibition organised by the local branch of The Stroke Association. A couple of years ago I was asked to run a watercolour workshop for a group of stroke survivors who meet in Hunstanton, Norfolk and I’ve been working with the group off and on  ever since.

There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind that art, painting and drawing, can be hugely beneficial in accelerating the recovery process for a victim of a stroke. Making art builds cognitive and motor skills and it gives the stroke survivor a sense of purpose and achievement when they are able to create a work of art, no matter how simple.

The Stroke Association wanted to stage an exhibition that would showcase the abilities of those who had participated in art therapy, but they also wanted to involve other local artists to support the cause. I’m glad to say that those local artists were very generous in their support and over the weekend of August 18th and 19th we staged a very successful exhibition.

You can see a few photos from the show here and I’ll show you some more, particularly of paintings from the stroke survivors in a later post. My thanks to Rik Thornton for the photos.

photo of stroke association exhibition 1the mayor looks round the exhibitionvisitors study the artworks

Small is Beautiful, Hopefully

I haven’t been very active on my Blog for a while, but I have been busy with various projects, some arty and some not.  You know the sort of thing, holidays, cutting the hedge, plus a bit of watercolour tutoring. But now it’s September and the brushes have had to do some work, because it’s exhibition time again!
Watercolour painting of cooking on a stove
Cooking with Gas! Watercolour, 8ins square

This one is another mixed show from the members of the West Norfolk Artists Association. The WNAA usually have a Small Works exhibition at this time of the year, but there’s a double theme this year – Small Works and Still Life. So my paintings will be small and still, but hopefully still exciting!

The venue is Greyfriars Art Space, St James St King’s Lynn, and the exhibition opens this Saturday 24th until the following Saturday 1st October. 10.30am – 4pm every day. Hope you can make the show some time during the week – Margaret and I will be ‘in residence’ on the afternoon of the first Saturday, the 24th.
Watercolour painting of collection of bottles
Seven Bottles. Watercolour, 8ins square

The two works that I’m showing can be seen here, both of them about 8 inches square, plus the frame. I rarely tackle still life subjects, although I have done a few over the years, but I really enjoyed the challenge. As the size restriction was quite tight, the whole picture including frame must be no more than 12 inches on the largest dimension, I tried to make my watercolours quite colourful, to make an impact even on a small scale. I used MaimeriBlu paints, which have some vibrant colours in the range, including a nice bright Cadmium Red Light which I put to use in the Cooking with Gas work. Other colours used include Berlin Blue and Lemon Yellow.

The framed works are about 9.5 inches square, and you can see them here. Each work is priced at £125. I’ll be back with more blog posts soon, as the painting season is upon us!

Two framed still-life paintings
The two still life paintings in their frames, about 9.5ins square