May 2012

Laura Jaquays, Family Member/Friend, Various Cancer Types
Isabel's Garden of Hope

Laura Jaquays is a Maine-based artist and educator who has tapped her experience as an expressive arts practitioner and community organizer to create Art HOPE, a grassroots art and healing initiative. She works hands-on with individuals and groups in the areas of complementary cancer care, women's wellness, mental health, youth at-risk, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, and hospice support.

Of Isabel's Garden of Hope, featured in May in the 2011-2012 Expressions of Hope calendar, Laura explains, “This painting was inspired by a creative conversation with an oncology patient named Isabel. We spoke of how she liked to express her creativity through her love of nature and gardening. Isabel described all her favorite flowers in a colorful and animated way, like those in this rendering. It was a few weeks prior to having a difficult cancer treatment and I asked how she saw herself in that moment. She gently told me that she could ‘see herself as a little blue bird, flying high above her garden near the Rachel Carson preserve in Kennebunk.' That beautiful metaphor is what I visualized to create this ‘trans-healing' work, which inspired hope and well-being for both the patient who shared her story and for me as the painter.”

More information about the Expressions of Hope calendar is available at www.cancer.net/expressionsofhope.