A Rest at Ravenscrag

“A Rest at Ravenscrag” is a finger-painted portrayal of my hospital bed. It was created as a therapeutic response to my psychiatric hospitalization and my resulting hand tremors, a side-effect of my psychiatric medication, as my brushwork is much less steady these days. It was a surreal experience for me to return to the Allan Memorial Institute, not in a hospital gurney ushered by medics, but on my own two feet with a camera in hand and in a much healthier and happier state of being.

Meant to capture the very essence of “the Allan,” this painting was created using finger strokes to apply acrylic paint directly on canvas. The image evokes an empty hospital bed, which represents the end goal of a stint in the brief therapy unit: to heal and to depart. The painting, rendered in a restful “Payne’s grey” shade, is my testimony to this experience.

  • Christina Marie Phelps has been practicing and teaching visual arts for over thirteen years, both in schools and in the community and believes strongly in the value of play and collaboration as a tool for artistic expression. Her own practice is concerned with exercises in mixed media and ephemeral street art installations, drawing, painting, and light-based media. In the Summer of 2014, she was a student participant in the TASK Party Course at Concordia, and in 2015 she won the CUSRA Undergraduate Research Fellowship, to continue to explore the benefits of the TASK Party course offering while curating the Youth activities of the annual Under Pressure Festival and Queens Creation Festival. Awarded the Erin and Heather Humanitarian Award for her involvement in her community art programming, Christina Marie continues to inspire and create alongside students and youth participants in various Montreal schools and Arts Centers.

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