Art and Counselling (part 2) - MS Canvas

The second canvas I did for counselling was around my feeling towards my MS. I feel like its a monster that is always behind me waiting for me to relax and it'll 'bite'.


I bought a black 12 x 12 canvas and dry brushed various Ferro metallic paints on to it. My Mam had torn a piece of cardboard from a box in a wonderful shape. I painted that with more Ferro paint in blue.

I had many ideas for the canvas, but none were working, so I left it for a while as I wanted to get it just right. I tore some pages from some MS magazines that I subscribe to and eventually came up with the idea of a hungry sea monster biting at a girl dangling above it. I used a citrus Paint Dabber to colour the monster and a Tippex pen to colour the teeth and put the spots on.

Next I took a picture of a model out of a magazine and glued it to a piece of card for strength before cutting it out.  I coloured her in grey with a wax crayon (the only thing to hand and I couldn't be bothered to stand up!) and gave her red shoes.  If I could, I'd wear red HIGH heels.  The shoe falling off represents the way that each time MS bites (in the form of a relapse) it takes a little of you away.  At the moment its just my red high heels!

I wanted it to seem like a fifties cartoon strip so I gave the monster and heroine speech bubbles cut from MS magazines.  I also did a little 'commentary' to bring it all together, again from MS magazines.



The whole canvas depicts totally how I feel about the MS.  I dangled the heroine string which I hammered into the top of the canvas with a decorative staple.  I say hammered because the speciality stapler it came from wouldn't work like a normal stapler when you can use just the top to staple, so I hammered it in instead!

Here is the front of the canvas.

The back of the canvas is also 'decorated'.  I used pictures cut from MS magazines again to show some of the symptoms I suffer from.  The left one shows how I can never know what is round the corner for me.  The middle is depression.  The right is fatigue.  Even looking at that photo gives me the wobbles.  I know I'd never manage those stairs!

I then wrote 'MS' in orange (the colour of the MS Society) and crossed it out in green, the colour of the MS Resource Centre (MSRC) who I support and sell cards at Christmas in aid of.  They have been a great help to me since I was diagnosed.

So there you have it, my MS Canvas and it was very, very cathartic to do.