museum dr. guislain - gent (belgium) - 2007/2008
'Bill, Betsy, Bob and the others'
A portraits Cabinet of Bart Drost
The Vincent Van Gogh
Institute in Venray has teamed with Museum Dr. Guislain in Ghent a booklet
issued with portraits that Visual artist/therapist Bart Drost made of clients
who were included in the clinic for Neuro psychiatry. The portraits are 'reconstructions of encounters with patients'. They seem to hear together
despite all their horrors. And they seem crazy: If you knew any better you
would think they were drawn by a patient. A patient with real talent, though,
and those are rare. The portraits are all different, all black gray but with colorful
attributes that make them exciting. Almost nobody looks cheerful. One tail off
or the gaze is directed inward. There are big eyes of fear. It was therefore for
Bart a statement every time to get us our creative. I remember of the visits to
the creative therapy: Bart who you always cheerfully gave a hand, the cabinets
with materials, the load with large sheets of thin paper which I often not more
knew to draw than a male who climbed a mountain, and the round table where
the most sat. Lies* who painted figurines with precision, Henk faithful coloring his
Mandalas, Anja who could learn a little to paint with watercolor and constantly
yeld for Barts aide, and Bart who constantly came on with ideas and materials when someone
threatened to get bogged down and the head lowered again or did polar bears in
the studio or began to cry ...
There is
something wrong with these portraits. I have spent almost five months in the clinic
for Neuropsychiatry and I don't recognize anybody. And I have also not heard one
and never met something crazy silly. There were depressed women, as that woman
with that dead Bird on her head. (There is a popular booklet on depression with
the title "I see each death bird ', but so it even can be worse.) The breasts
at the women of Bart hang a little bit, but when they are alone, the apples of
Orange and radiates the handsome woman. And then there's the negress who paints
with the mouth: the brushes where the colors are almost splash around.
I've unfortunately never met her. You are looking for similarities and I can not
find them. Only Bart has seen them. Yet these portraits tell more about the patients than the
rich words in diagnoses that they take home and will be in the files that accompany them when
they carried away. Of course they are scared, sad, desperate, or 'just'. Or
sometimes they hear voices.
I'm already
more than a year away from Venray and don't want to think about it too much, but
this particular booklet I store - after all I've torn apart - as good reminder.
And, they say, that I am also in itself: that male with that glasses and that
separation that death for themselves, looking to the extreme. On page 16. Maybe
I am though. Now again I can laugh a little. It was still a good time at Bart,
if you had been but not that sick.
E.S.
* The names are fictitious.