5 days ago
Disability advocate Ann Kennedy defies illness to stage first art exhibit in 17 years
Ann Kennedy, who was born in 1952, has fond memories from when she last exhibited in Bray, in 2008, when she recalled eating pizza on Albert Walk, with friends and family, before returning home only to lapse into a terribly difficult period. As she said herself: 'I ceased all creative work for 10 full years'.
That creative slump was brought on by her illness, which she so candidly described in her memoir, Unprotected, which details the difficulties she has faced in life due to being born with Rubella.
Congenital rubella syndrome (CRS) is an illness in infants that results from maternal infection with rubella virus during pregnancy. A child can be born with severe hearing loss and/or visual impairment, congenital cataracts, heart defects, and gradually develop a myriad of other significant challenges. Ann shares this same birth experience with her twin sister, Margaret.
In 2017, she told the Irish Independent: 'I woke at seven this morning, and I was crying. I'm depressed and feel utterly hopeless. That often happens. Sometimes we think of ending it all; we are so terribly weary of fighting.'
Those heartbreaking words were written when she and her sister, both then 64, admitted they were struggling to get the professional help and support they needed.
As children growing up in Killiney, they had to battle with a hearing impairment, and by their early 20s, had followed their own paths. Ann was doing animation in London, collaborating on projects such as the Watership Down movie and promotions for Pink Floyd, while Margaret trained as a nurse at Great Ormond Street Hospital.
Ann returned to Ireland and became an accomplished artist and award-winning writer and illustrator of children's books but when the sisters were in their 40s, they encountered health issues that had a serious impact on their ability to function.
Over the next few years, they were both tested and it was discovered that some of their health problems included Parkinson's disease and muscle myopathy (muscle wasting disease), which requires them to use wheelchairs most of the time.
They moved to Greystones but left in 2015, after what Ann described as 'dreadful years' in an open letter, which ended with the parting words: 'I never wish to see the place again and hope I can erase the memory from my mind swiftly once I do leave.'
Thankfully, her memories of Bray are more florid as she makes a welcome return with her new exhibition, 'All in the Brain'. The exhibition of works slowly began to take form years after that visit in 2008 and the ensuing slump, when 'one day,' she said, 'being brave, I visited an art shop'.
ADVERTISEMENT
Learn more
"I began again,' she said of the new exhibition. 'It was now all in the brain and the brain would have to perform in some fashion. I knew this was going to be different and punctuated with hesitancy, despondency and confusion. Grave self-doubt enveloped me. I worked from a perspective of loss. What I produced were experimentations, learning to capture my inadequacy and hopefully some adequacy. I gave myself permission to fail in the hope I could achieve.'
While she admits she 'caved many times and withered', her strength and perseverance has brought the new body of work which will be on display at the gallery until Sunday, August 3.
'I propose to show a body of creative painting that defy my personal reason. I propose to offer hope to the community of sick, older people and those with disability that if you want to paint, then paint. The work will be eclectic as personal strength is returning and styles keep changing. I begin making decisions again, abandon some and accept others. It's all in the learning,' she said.
'A decade of inaction through ill health and mystery requires opening my personal Pandora's Box. Gold may not be in fact gold, but nothing can change a person who creates through love and abandon. That is my gold, silver and bronze. Even if not in equal proportions.'
The opening reception for All in the Brain is on Sunday, July 27, from 3-5pm.
