At difficult times in her life, Carole Reid has always turned to art. Whether painting or printmaking, “mucking around with something creative” was her way of flushing her anxieties out of her system.
So when the Nanaimo artist was diagnosed with breast cancer last May, she returned to that familiar coping instinct.
“When the oncologist phoned and told me about the size of the tumour it just freaked me right out,” Reid said.
“So instead of screaming or crying or phoning my husband, I went right to the canvas and I drew a really dark, dark painting.”
Ten days after her diagnosis Reid underwent a right-side mastectomy. She said it took six weeks to recover from the procedure, which left her right arm numb, a side effect that continues to linger. Her surgeon recommended therapy to help her regain strength. She suggested that her art would get her used to using her arm again.
“I said to him, ‘I am an artist and painting has always helped me through everything, so I’m just going to continue with painting,'” Reid said.
She returned to hospital to begin chemotherapy treatment and kept a sketchbook by her side. Her drawings from that period reflect the sensation of being overwhelmed by major surgery and the subsequent painful rounds of radiation. Reid said cancer brought expletives back into her vocabulary.
An image that kept coming to her was that of a woman’s torso with the left breast exposed and a slash on the right side. Partially due to the weakness in her right arm, the drawings took on a crude style.
“I’d just get up sometimes in the middle of the night and I just had to make whatever I could feel inside and they just came out this way,” she said.
The pain and sickness from the chemotherapy became unbearable for Reid and she chose to abandon the treatment, even if that decision carries risks.
“I want life. I want to live life and I don’t care about quantity, I want quality,” she said. “And I’m 62, I’m not 30, and I had a really good life. So I don’t feel like if I was to die in the next year that it was too early. I just feel calm.”
After leaving hospital Reid continued to create art inspired by her breast cancer experience. Wanting to get bigger than sketches, Reid moved to multimedia prints, incorporating pastels, braille paper to represent loss of sensation, and staples. She said she still hears the sound of surgical staples being removed from her chest and dropped into a tray.
“I’ll never forget the sound of them going ‘ting’ after they took one out because there were like 28 or 29 staples,” she said.
Over the past year Reid has shared her story and her art on social media, starting a blog and an Instagram account. Cancer groups have featured her work. Reid said cancer survivors have commented that they are thankful that the art is “so personal and so raw” and it has helped them reflect on their experiences. They’ve called her brave for thus exposing herself.
From July 27 to 29 Reid is displaying a collection of 50 prints at Gallery Merrick. They will be placed in plastic bags and hung with medical tape against white walls to give the impression of a sterile, palliative environment.
“I am really nervous about doing it, but at the same time part of my goal is educating people and women in particular,” Reid said. “So I have a feeling that the show is going to be very emotional for quite a few people because they’re pretty raw, but I like that about art. I like that my art brings out emotion in people because everyone’s always said that about anything I paint. They call me an ’emotional expressionist,’ which I think is great.”
Reid said she hopes her work leaves people touched and with a new sense of what women with breast cancer go through. She said the illness has a different impact depending on when it strikes in a woman’s life; that the healing is harder for older women, but younger women must re-evaluate all their future plans.
In Reid’s case she was fortunate to have a timely mastectomy. And just as surgery cut the sickness from her body, art cut the sickness from her spirit.
“When you’re in [situations] like that it can get really dark and I don’t want that to be inside me,” she said. “I want to get it out.”
WHAT’S ON … Opening reception for Carole Reid exhibition at Gallery Merrick, 13B Commerical St., on Friday, July 27 from 7 to 9 p.m. Show continues on Saturday and Sunday, July 28 and 29, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily.
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