ART IMPROVES QUALITY OF LIFE FOR STROKE SURVIVORS

ART THERAPY IMPROVES LIVES AFTER A STROKE

Berlin/ Stroke Art Festival           from goog

A study done in Copenhagen  in 2012 showed that stroke survivors who like art had significantly higher quality of  life than those who did not, according to new research.  Patients who appreciated music, painting and theater recovered better from their strokes than patients who did not.

Eugene Brown  shared his belief for years that art therapy improved
stroke patients .                                              from google

Patients interested in art had better general health, found it easier to walk, and had more energy.  They were also happier, less anxious or depressed, and felt calmer.  They had better memory and were superior communicators( speaking with other people understanding what people said, naming people and objects correctly.) Dr. Vellone says: "Stroke survivors who saw art as an integrated part of their former lifestyle, by expressing appreciation towards music, painting, theatre, showed better recovery skills than those who did not." 
In the photography above is Eugene Brown who shared his belief for many years with others that art therapy improved stroke patients lives. 

Stoke patients in Manchester, England show their art works.

Manchester England                  Art show of Art Patients

Tamside Artist group  in Manchester worked with stroke patients to do art and put on their own art show.

 The video below shows using art therapy to help stroke patients recover.  Just clink arrow in center of screen to watch.

Meeting Martin Stynes(click)

Have you ever met someones art before you met them?  That was the case with Martin.  We have corresponded on line and facebook for a good long time.  We have talked art, about his shows and exhibitions, we have talked of other artists, we have talked of philosophy and science.  I have read Martin's poetry, and time traveled with him to the future and back.  I have introduced other artists to him and him to me.  And now he sent his work to a gallery in Florida near where I live.  So I hurried over to see it and there it was hung in the front room, the same lovely abstract landscape paintings I knew so well.  I would have bought that tryptic, but someone beat me to it, it had a little red dot...sold! I think it happened the first day, lucky person!   So now I must get Martin to come to Florida or North Carolina when I can actually get to meet this fine painter and good hearted friend in person!

" Welcome Martin, I thought, so nice to finally meet you!"

Me meeting Martins' Painting            photo by Ann Suggs

photo by Elizabeth Gordon

"All of us do this: Experiment, play, move things around, juxtapose stuff, re-invent and re name. Sometimes something happens and we stop and stare. We didn't know we were going to do this. And then it might wind up in the editing page and make its way to an album on facebook, pinned to the wall and stared at. And again some of this becomes a piece of work to finish. It might end up in the blog or listed on the website. Occasionally it is selected for a show. A group exhibition or a solo show. People come and look. Stop and stare again. The title intrigues them, it begins a train of thought they were not expecting. I visit and see this thing with words and begin to wonder if I knew what I was doing. It is often the case that I conclude, no, I didn't know. This is why I and we are in awe of what we do and what we bring into this world. In awe because I do not think it is us who are in charge." a quote by Martin Stynes

Close up detail of Martin's tryptic 

note the red dot...SOLD!

Morean Art Gallery and Center Members Show

Hi Martin Stynes, so nice to meet you!

THE ART OF MARTIN STYNES

Martin Stynes                       Abstract Landscape         google image

"Martin Stynes’ paintings speak for themselves.  Every human being notices the sky and earth. When John Constable went out with his easel and paints he called it going out skying. He was trying to capture the infinite.

Men have probably been around as thinking beings for 500 000 years. Logged into our basic primeval memory are all those impressions of the sky we live under. These paintings give viewers a link to the past and future in their own lives and also the past and future of humanity.

And yet they might not know why. These paintings are a hidden link between past, present and future they surpass the concrete and allow the viewer to access emotions they were not aware they had.

"Somewhere, we are acquainted with Joy" 2011

Because the form is abstract the viewer cannot tie the image directly to experience  and the brain instinctively searches for the emotions which correlate to the image.  Some of these emotions are extremely intense and powerful, they may be beauty and peace or love or hate or even fear and terror.  In the split seconds after the realisation the brain makes the connection that this is an image and not reality. Those who feel love and peace are grateful for the experience those who feel fear or terror are relieved that it is just an image and not reality. Intense experiences in life are remembered much better than the ordinary run of the mill events. When the viewer sees these paintings he or she may be projected back in time by the emotion they experience to an experience in their own lives which is lurking deep in their conscious or unconscious mind and may have been buried for years until they see these paintings. Best of all they may only experience the emotion rather than exact recall of an event, and be mesmerised by the experience."  from an article on Martins Work

 Martin's work takes me to another time and place, here on Earth and in other dimensions.  When I was a child of four and five I had dreams of living in another time and space.  My Mother, rather than correct me listening patiently, which allowed me to honor my memories. I was a child already with a great imagination, but these dreams were so real.  I knew it was England and in the late 1800's, I could sense I had walked the streets of London in a long grey wool skirt that swept the ground and I could see high granite curbs I stepped upon to enter stores....who knows about memories and a child, but it made me believe in Einstein's theory of relativity and the string theory of coexisting times and worlds.  Martin's work brings alive in me primal feelings of other worlds and places and deep feelings of longing and of stunning beauty of a universe we can rarely explain even to ourselves.  Get to know Martin's work and it will take you on an unexpected journey into your deepest primordial self!