Stacy Nottle
Project title: Impact of Psychoeducation in Art Therapy on the Wellbeing of Cancer Patients
For Stacy, the opportunity to study and become an art therapist seemed like the perfect marriage between two great loves, science and art, with the power to profoundly change her life and the lives of others. Hers was a creative family—her mother, brother and son are reputable artists—and as a kid growing up in the outback, her family often took paints, brushes and boards into the bush and lost themselves in the wonder of nature. But for much of her life, Stacy has worn science as her public face and allowed art to exist only in her subliminal worlds. Her creative impulses were held captive for decades due to residue shame from her school days (as is the case with fifty percent of people, according to Brene Brown) and she was always careful about allowing her creative captives out to play. This was until cancer threatened to take her life and she began asking herself, ‘What ways of being with myself, others, and the world will lead me to the greatest enthusiasm and satisfaction in my life?’ She came to understand that creativity is not a luxury but an essential part of being human.
Stacy’s research has allowed her to explore the lived experiences of others dealing with cancer and the impact of art therapy and psychoeducation on their wellbeing. The concept for her artwork is mail art with each piece intended as a design for the front of a postcard and each location being a metaphorical representation of the thoughts and curiosities that arose for her during the research process. Likening mail art to the research process, Stacy makes reference to Catherine Moon who explains that the ‘sometimes-inefficient glory’ of the postal system requires patience and faith, deferred gratification and an opportunity to slow down and reflect. It requires collaboration between many people, and importantly, mail art enables art to become more accessible by removing it from the context of showing and selling. Her final piece is a pen and ink sketch showing all the fictitious places the postcards have been sent from, in a three-dimension map. This hero’s journey is now complete, and transformation has occurred.
Watercolour on canvas, with oak frame
40.64 x 30 cm
In spring, bison follow the receding snowline into Lamar Valley, a phenomenon called ‘surfing the green wave’. Their grazing pattern actively shapes and extends the new growth. Likewise, the research landscape is dynamic, and my questions, choices, and methods can shape and extend it and influence future directions.
Acrylic on canvas
17 x 14 cm
a giant alien foot dips its toes into a desert mirage...
light bends
I didn’t expect refraction to occur when the alien put its foot into the mirage in the same way it might have done had I been painting a straw in a glass of water. How I think about why a phenomenon occurs will influence everything I then go on to do.
Acrylic on canvas, with gold frame
40.64 x 30 cm
As explained so elegantly by Lorenz's Butterfly Effect, in chaos theory, we see that the smallest events can trigger massive, unpredictable consequences over time in a dynamic system. Caging the Butterfly shows the loss of freedom I feel when attempting to control variables while working with human subjects, but it also offers hope that no matter how small my project, once the butterfly is set free, the effects might extend beyond the limits of the cage.
Watercolour on canvas, with oak frame
40.64 x 30 cm
Choosing a research topic that personally resonated with me gave depth and meaning to the work. As the person in the canoe, paddling over the lake, careful reflection was necessary to ensure objectivity and validity.
Collage and acrylic on canvas
33 x 30cm
Voyager One’s cameras were permanently shut down over 35 years ago because, as the spacecraft approached the edge of our solar system, cameras were no longer a useful means of collecting data. The phrase ‘killing our darlings’ is a literary term meaning to remove parts that the author personally feels attached to, but which may not serve the overall clarity, flow, or purpose of the work. Likewise, I have had to kill some darlings when devising my methodology.
Glue and pink food colour on canvas
32 x 27.5 cm
Women with cancer.
Toxic chemicals flooding their veins.
Lives become sticky,
And pink.
In the Deep (Ocean)
Acrylic pour painting
10 x 10 x 3.5cm
Uncertain—
I am a stranger in a vast ocean.
Nearby, a fish surfs the waves.
Surrender to the pull of the currents
Accept what is,
Or be pulled under and drown