A program at the Hintonburg Community Centre allows some people with mental illness to find an outlet through creative expression.
Every Thursday afternoon, men and women walk into the purple-walled classroom of The Art Studio and are seen as artists, not as people living with mental illness.
The program, held at the Hintonburg Community Centre, provides a safe environment where artists with mental illness can pursue their work.
Inside the studio a smorgasbord of supplies – such as acrylics, watercolours and charcoal – is spread across the counter. A coffee tin and a yogurt container hold paintbrushes.
Katjana Biljan, the Ottawa-born co-ordinator of the drop-in sessions, says her passion for using art as a healing tool for mental illness comes from firsthand knowledge of its therapeutic value.
Born with congenital heart disease, Biljan turned to painting as a child because the playground was off-limits.
Since the program began in 2001, she has met artists living with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depression. However, she says that the program isn’t meant to provide therapy, but to allow artists to be artists.
“Arts do more than beautify,” Biljan says. “They are a form of harm reduction, creation, expression, recovery, entertainment, and they instil a sense of pride.”
Participants are given art supplies and bus tickets through funding from the United Way.
The Art Studio is just one of an increasing number of art programs being promoted for mental health and wellness by medical professionals and service groups in Ottawa.
“It’s been a godsend for me,” says Viv, a participant who describes herself as being borderline agoraphobic, referring to the anxiety disorder characterized by a fear of unfamiliar surroundings. “It makes me leave my house. I see my friends. It’s a lot of fun.”
Viv, who asked to be identified only by her first name, is happy to show off the collection of animals she has moulded and painted at the studio. She points to a snail whose shell she painted in rainbow colours.
“I thought I’d go a little psychedelic with that one. I’m a child of the '60s,” she laughs.
Viv has been coming to The Art Studio for six years and encouraged her friend Lynn Serrurier, who is also agoraphobic, to join the program.
The bespectacled friends are seated next to each other at the studio’s rectangular table, which is set up to give 12 artists a generous workspace.
Serrurier explains that she never used to leave her immediate surroundings.
Going beyond the familiar blocks of her neighbourhood was impossible.
“Your nerves take hold,” she says.
But this summer, she returned to her hometown of Navan for the first time in 50 years. She attended the annual August fair, an event she says she always looked forward to as a kid.
Serrurier says that people at The Art Studio understand each other because they’re going through the same things.
“It’s not just an art studio,” Serrurier says. “It’s a social outlet.”
Biljan believes so strongly in the program that she kept it running over the summer this year for the first time in the program’s seven-year history.
She says she thinks continued access to the arts lifts the spirits of participants and she wants to continue to keep it open year-round for them.