Shannon Kelly Lake Life Magazine
Artist Patty Van Dolson of Glad Hill, Va., uses her passion to cope with her Stage 4 Breast Cancer. She has experienced 140 chemotherapy treatments, and has been metastatic (meaning the cancer is incurable and terminal) for 7 years. Most metastatic cancer patients only survive 2 years in that state, she explains. “A lot of [survival] is mental positivity. It won’t help cure anything, but it does help you enjoy the life you have. I use the art to get me up and get me moving.”
After starting her artistic career in photography, Patty now creates unique mosaic art that focuses especially on human emotion. Exploring these raw themes helps her to process and cope with her own emotions that she faces with her cancer. “I view art as communication,” she says. “There’s no real picture of fear, or sadness, or joy. How do you draw a picture of joy?” Patty uses a problem-solving mindset to create artistic depictions of these feelings. Most of her pieces feature human figures, particularly female. The figures often feature a mirror for a face, allowing the viewer to see themselves in the art. Without facial expressions, Patty had to learn to depict emotions in other ways. “Putting a figure, say, in a landscape – and maybe it’s just walking under the trees with dark, rainy type thing – can create an impression of loneliness or sadness,” she explains. “You might have a fist up for being angry. Or you might have two hands up in the air with the fingers open for joy.” Her current project is entitled “Shelter from the Storm.”
Each work of art takes Patty approximately 3 to 6 weeks to complete. She incorporates vintage jewelry, mirrors, pebbles, and other dazzling, eye-catching bits and pieces with stained glass. “You get to go find pretty, sparkly, shiny things, and I put all that into the art,” she says. She recently finished a piece featuring predominantly vintage jewelry, cleverly entitled “Bling It On.” “You get a bit snarky, but you do fight your battle,” she says. She also describes her unique artistic style. “I break the rules.” Her mosaics are heavy heavy in geometrical shapes, spirals, bold colors, stylized human figures, and shiny features. While many pieces are bold and colorful, she also leans the other way and explores the “dark side,” the “sad part. Because that’s how part of it is,” she admits.
Patty often faces massive fatigue from her condition and the side effects of treatment, but she has learned to work through and around the setbacks. “I have [my work] out in my barn, so that becomes my social network. People stop by, and I get visitors, and you get to chat and meet people, and you’re still outgoing. The rest of it, I share on Facebook!” she laughs. “You still get that social interaction, but without having to go out when you don’t have the energy to do a whole lot of activity.” “You fight the fatigue, and you fight the side effects, and you try to keep moving. And if you keep moving, you can mitigate a lot of the side effects.”
While she often lacks the energy to go out to social events, Patty finds an active support system with fellow cancer patients in online support groups. “It gets pretty hilarious out there,” she says with a laugh. Diseases can be impossible to cope with if one cannot develop some sense of humor, even if it seems warped to healthy people. “We get nice and snarky and humorous. We do go to the dark side [with our humor], but it is fun. Some of it’s some bathroom humor because of what we deal with, but it’s OK.” These friendships bring joy, but also sorrow and stark reminders of mortality. “You deal with losing friends weekly, if not bi-weekly. But we all chip around each other, too, and we’ll be sending memes or love till the very end almost, because otherwise it’s lonely.”
Patty frequently donates proceeds from her art sales to organizations for cancer research. “The research is very important in the long run,” she says. “That’s what will prevent the deaths.” Occasionally, she donates prints of her work to different places such as radiology offices, cancer centers, and colleges. Her work can also be viewed and purchased at her establishment, Gallery in the Pines.
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