Art making has been an important part of my healing process. Ellen Dissanayake claims that making art offers the opportunity to engage with the art of repetition to elaborate on our experience of desire, instilling a sense of belonging, meaning and competence in ourselves and in other people. Art can also redirect our focus away from ourselves, enabling us to pay attention to the movement of God. Art can therefore function to engage our bodies, enabling us to be aware of ourselves and attend to our bodily presence whilst refocusing our attention toward God in whom we ultimately belong. In this way making art can be considered a prayerful movement toward healing that leads us to the acceptance of what it means to live in a human body, fully engaged and participating in the life of God, in sickness and in health.
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When the experience of disability was new for me, finding ways to continue working as an artist were important. Hope on the Horizon II, is an oil painting that is largely bound with plaster bandages. The thin line of transparent green oil paint that is the horizon emerges from beneath the bandages, as a reminder to carefully respect the unseen process of healing that is at work in the presence of serious illness.