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The art of healing

The art of healing

“I’ve been making that art since I was about 20. I didn’t really even understand what was drawing me — pardon the pun to create art about women, but I’ve just always felt sort of pulled to the power that women have,” she says.

“It’s an intrinsic power that, through the eons and millennia, has been taken away from us. It used to be the Earth Mother and goddesses. Women were revered and venerated and powerful, and in past millennia that power and social standing has been taken away. And yet, we still have that power inside of us. It’s just something that I feel and believe in.”

That was the image Kincaid set out to portray in her painting of a woman with ovarian cancer, which now hangs above the check-in counter at the cancer unit. It’s one of her all-time favorite pieces, she says.

She originally painted it in 2007 for the cover of “TORCH: Tales of Remarkable Courage and Hope,” which is a book written by 25 ovarian cancer survivors at Baylor Hospital.

“It had to be conceptual, so I created a powerful woman holding a torch,” she explains. “But instead of facing you, she’s holding it behind her. She’s lighting the way for women who are yet to come with this cancer. The wind is blowing in her face and whipping her all around, yet she’s undaunted and she’s powerful, and her head is bloody but it’s unbowed. And she’s there, holding the light for other people.”

The torch picture holds a special place in the hearts of the staff and patients at the cancer unit, says Linda Gray, nurse manager for Women’s Health at Baylor Hospital. But the other 21 paintings do as well, because of what they represent — women being women.

“When women experience cancer, they don’t stop being normal women who go about life; however, their normal is a new normal,” Gray says, “because it does change them, but they are still just normal women going through life, doing normal things.”

Gray says patients often remark on the paintings, asking who the artist is. Eventually they decided to put plaques beside the paintings because so many people inquired about them.

Kincaid’s husband, C. Allen Stringer, is the chief of OB/GYN and gynecologic oncology at Baylor Hospital. He, too, says not a week goes by that a woman doesn’t remark on the paintings. Some even say the paintings helped them keep walking down the hallway.

“It just reinforces to me the healing power of art,” Kincaid says. “I believe in it with all my heart.”

May 4 FREE adMission

Art Scavenger Hunt 10 am – 2 pm

Children’s Art Activity

10 am – 12 noon

Art in Action Sculpture Demo

10 am – 12:30 pm

Family Tours

Hourly from 10:15 am – 12:15 pm

Yoga in the Garden 11:30 am

Presented by YogaSport (weather permitting)

Creative Writing with The Writer’s Garret 12 pm

Storytime with Dallas Public Library 12:30 pm

NasherKids Live! 1 pm

New York International Children’s Film Festival Kid Flix Mix

NasherKids Meal at Nasher Cafe

11 am – 2 pm

NasherSculptureCenter.org

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