How Art Heals-WEB

53 23. Lin Bentley Keeling WWW.LINBENTLEYKEELING.COM TEXAS, USA “ The Long and Winding Road was a piece I created during a dark time in my life. My mother had passed away from cancer, and, although I was mourning, three days later my mother-in-law broke her hip, and my hus- band and I were the only ones capable of helping her. We brought her to our home to convalesce. It turned out she had dementia as well and so was unable to return to her own home. “For a year, I was her primary caregiver. For another year, I supervised her care when she entered a nursing home. This was the first artwork I made after she passed, an undulating form with variegated boucle yarn.” I wasn’t happy with this piece when I f inished it. I’d pushed through, knowing I had to in the process of getting back to art. It was cathartic and necessary to move on from that dark place. When I look at it now, I see that the bands of bright colors moving across the surface are symbolic of the positive feelings I was struggling to reconnect with. This piece was a refuge in times of depression and feelings of futility. My mother’s positive attitude while she was alive, despite chronic health problems, inspired me. “For Relief of Rain , I was inspired by a skein of beautifully dyed wool yarn that reminded me of the colors of the sandstone cliffs after a rain. Rain is precious here in the Southwest desert where I live, and it sometimes doesn’t occur for weeks or months at a time.” I used the dark, variegated wool yarn coming down from the top as a way to express the joy I feel when we have a desert rain.