Healing with art

 Keisha Shakespeare-Blackmore, Staff Reporter

For Rosemarie Chung, art therapy is more than just a profession. It is a way to make a difference in the lives of people who have had traumatic experiences.

A professional artist, who lectures at the Edna Manley College of Visual and Performing Arts, Chung has been a practising art therapist for five years. She uses it to get people who are displaced to express themselves through art.

Her technique entails conventional tasks, which range from exercise routines to simple questions such as, 'what makes you happy or unhappy? When you say you are depressed, what do you mean?

The biggest challenge of Chung's career to date is using art therapy as rehabilitation for several young men who were detained during the bloody west Kingston incursion in May.

Over 70 persons were killed during the two-day stand-off between security forces and gunmen loyal to west Kingston don, Christopher 'Dudus' Coke.

"In this venture, we have asked the boys to do a project on peace. They are asked to draw, paint images of their future goals," Chung explained.

"We also encourage those who are in school to stay in school, and those who have dropped out, we try to find ways for them to go back."

This is not the first time Chung has worked with inner-city youth. She first came in contact with inner-city youth while she was employed to Things Jamaica in the 1980s.

Solve personal issues

She also acted as a therapist/mentor for patients at Ward 21, the psychiatric wing of the University Hospital of the West Indies, five years ago. Her job was to see if patients would respond to art. She used drama, music, and art to create the healing process and tap into the minds of the patients. She allows them to express their emotions on paper. "The truth is, people will express on paper what they would not normally verbalise and it is an indirect way of having them solve personal issues," said Chung.

She recalls working with a schizophrenic patient who would draw everything in muddy colours. However, after being on medication, he painted the most beautiful landscape with bright colours and sunshine. "Though he was healed through medication his progress was revealed through art."

Chung dedicates her time selflessly to inner-city children, offering them therapy through art at her Studio 174 located at Harbour Street, Kingston, which she founded in 2006. She uses the studio as a multifunctional art studio, where she showcases her students' work. She also operates a free Saturday class for children in the surrounding inner-city areas, educating them on the different forms of art and teaching them to paint on canvases, draw and so on.

"This takes them to a different place where they can dream and see their dreams being fulfilled on paper with no judgement or about being right or wrong."

Passion for art

The London-born Chung told Flair that she has always had a deep passion for art. Initially, she wanted to be an actress but after high school in England (Voxhall Manor High School for Girls) she did her degree in fine arts (with honours) at Camberwell School of Art and Craft, also in England.

She then became a full-time artist. In the mid-1980s, she moved to Jamaica where her father lived and got a job at Things Jamaica as project coordinator and export supervisor.

After fours years with Things Jamaica, Chung went back to being a full-time artist. In 1996, she got a job at Edna Manley teaching landscaping and painting. But, for the past five years, she has been lecturing degree and diploma students on concepts development through drawing.

Chung noted that she believes most people are creative but they just don't utilise their creativity. She added that some of the most creative persons are found in the inner-cities, and she believes that downtown Kingston can become an artist colony.

"My hope is to see the inner city change through art." Thus, she has submitted 15 pieces from her students from the inner city to be a part of the Cityart Pieces for Peace wall project. The peace wall is to be erected in New York, and organisers are seeking youths, ages five to about 21 from 35 countries that have inner-city areas, to create images that they consider to represent peace to be on the wall. Also, the organisers have shown interest in erecting a peace wall in Jamaica as well.

keisha.shakespeare@gleanerjm.com