By CAMERON LUCADOU-WELLS
AN art exhibition by people living with Parkinson’s disease is aiming to send a message — through vibrant strokes of colour.
The paintings come from 43 artists in Painting With Parkinson’s groups across Australia.
Organiser Anne Atkin, of Hallam, has lived with Parkinson’s for 13 years and set up seven Painting With Parkinson’s groups across the state.
“The exhibition is about saying to people with Parkinson’s, ‘You can still do it’. It says to the community: ‘Don’t wipe us off’.”
She says the disease sets off an “amazing sense of colour— it’s as if the movement part of the brain slows down and the creative part takes off”.
Atkin said studies showed the Parkinson’s painting groups also boosted participants’ optimism.
One of the exhibitors, Tony Weeks, of Noble Park, said painting his abstract work was a great feeling — although he sometimes threw his “failed” works in the bin.
His Berwick-based painting group is also a social hub with others living with the disease.
Weeks was a regular gym-user, lifting heavy weights every day of the week and pounding up the Thousand Steps in the Dandenong Ranges.
But about three years ago, the fitter and turner noticed he kept stumbling over some of the Thousand Steps. He went to his GP suspecting arthritis, but soon found out he had Parkinson’s.
Since being diagnosed, his strength has withered but he refuses to bow to the incurable disease. He heaves weights, swims and cycles an exercise bike at the gym four days a week, and gets regular speech therapy and physiotherapy.
The exercise keeps oxygen getting to the brain, and his symptoms such as tremors, slowed movement and loss of balance under control.
But the effort sometimes leaves him feeling “squashed”.
“You can have a great day one day, then the next, you’re all tired and stiff with aches and pains. It’s really weird.”
He said the group helped him overcome depression when first diagnosed. Part of the struggle was accepting the compliment from friends, “But you look so great”, when he’d just taken eight tablets and felt quite the opposite.
“You have to be strong with people. If they make a joke, don’t take it seriously.”
Atkin, a self-taught artist, would agree — she has self-published a cartoon book Living and Laughing With Parkinson’s, in which she self-effacingly tells of not being able to do up her own bra at a doctor’s surgery.
“Humour is vital. As I tell people in my [painting] groups, laughter is compulsory.”
Atkin hopes to launch new painting groups in Ringwood and Torquay by the end of the year.
The exhibition, run by Parkinson’s Victoria, is at Kingston Arts Centre, 979 Nepean Highway, Moorabbin, until April 16, excluding Sunday. To order copies of Atkin’s book, go to anneatkinart.com.
