LAUSR

The study of Patrick, the artist who took up art after his diagnosis of dementia is enlightening on several fronts. That art and creativity should not be left to the able, for we are all able in our own ways. The sea of our minds pitches and lifts to the currents of our thoughts, our imagination. What wonder then that Patrick, the Bpractical man^, perhaps leaving art behind as a child, returned to it in his final years. I imagine there was a homecoming there. Now, with no need for any adult embarrassment, he felt liberated to paint. I remember clearly, patients in an Irish hospice and nursing home, painting scenes from their youth in the last week of their lives. Art and music therapy, embedded in their care, enlarged the possibility of time. It breathed air into the spirit of the patient, family and staff. Patrick carefully arranged the objects on his table. Fascinatingly, it was only with an audience. Yes, the language is not of words but shapes, texture and sequence. This gentle play, this quiet choreography, this recognition, however distant. To follow knowledge like a sinking star, Beyond the utmost bound of human thought (Lord Tennyson, 1842)