Jake Lever

The blue, the dim and the gold

 

 

 

I first saw this piece at Medicine Unboxed 2012. It is a beautiful representation of the journey that Jake made with his dad who had a terminal illness.

 

"I approach my practice as a contemplative activity. My images are often derived from fragments of medieval paintings, frescoes and icons. Recently the hand has provided a focus for my work, a framework for the exploration of frailty, vulnerability and the presence of the divine"
 

 

 

 

 

JAKE LEVER believes that the arts can be an aid to recovery and the ongoing wellbeing of a person. He will be debuting his huge and stunning piece, the Blue and the Dim and the Gold. As tiny, fragile vessels, adrift in a half-light world, Jake helps us navigate the ‘dark night of the soul’, buoyed by the belief that there is a shimmering beauty to be discovered in the darkness

Stories from the day hospice

http://wellcomecollection.wordpress.com/category/stories-from-the-day-hospice/

Throughout the summer of 2012, Wellcome Trust Senior Editor Chrissie Giles spent time at the day hospice at Princess Alice Hospice, Esher, running a creative writing group. In a series of posts for the Wellcome Collection blog accompanying Death: A self-portrait, she reflected on her experiences there and showcased some of the writing produced by group members. These stories have now been gathered together as a single publication, and illustrated by Marianne Dear.

Fragile Narratives, 2011

As a doctor, I am interested in the important, but often overlooked, interface between art and medicine, as this provides a unique insight into the human condition.  I wanted to celebrate people’s narratives and histories, and experiment with different methods of recording and documenting these narratives. It is also interesting to see how some narratives become distorted by a disease process. I wanted to highlight how these narratives impact upon the next generation.

 

I did not want my work to be morbid, but instead something beautiful, celebrating life.

 

In our society, death and dying are seen as the last taboo. As a culture, our attitudes towards the elderly and the dying are not as positive as those held by other cultures. This is reflected in the recent political reports indicating that care in the fields of old age and palliative medicine needs to be done better. I have often witnessed people being defined solely by their disease, dehumanising them.

 

I decided to use fabric in this piece because of the narrative connotations associated with it... ‘spinning a yarn’/ ‘picking up a thread’/‘to fabricate’, etc. Also fabric has a certain delicacy and vulnerability that I wanted to take advantage of for this piece. 

 

 

 Fabric also has very personal and intimate associations with people throughout a lifetime, for example, fabric is the first thing we come into contact with when we are born, surrounds us throughout life in the form of clothing and bedding, and is the last thing to touch our skin in death.

 

I was really pleased with the transparency of the net curtains used to work on. I felt this represented the vulnerability of these people and how this group of people can be forgotten by society, hidden in their homes and looking out through their net curtains.