Aug
06
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Visions from the heart
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Ann Dearsley Vernon worked nearly three decades in the halls of the Chrysler Museum of Art.
Surrounded by masterpieces during the day, she neglected her paintbrushes at night.
"Why bother?" she thought.
Then, in her retirement, the Norfolk woman started to paint again. Life-threatening heart failure derailed that effort for a while but led to visions above her hospital bed.
Her body floating through space. Coming untethered from medical machinery. Being cut open and stapled back together.
The images stayed with her long past the surgeries.
Last fall, she began putting the pictures in her head to canvas.
Now those paintings are in a show titled "My Mechanical Heart" on display at the Mayer Fine Art Gallery through Saturday.
The show is a visual - and fantastical - view of Vernon's life, focusing on her heart surgery but capturing moments that date as far back as her childhood.
"I don't paint with the level of dedication that my friends do," said Vernon, who is 74.
For her, picking up the paintbrush is more therapeutic in nature. "An image will create a nagging in my head until I capture it."
In her late 50s, Ann Dearsley Vernon was driving down Interstate 264 when she experienced a short blackout. Fortunately, she came to within seconds, before anything happened. In this painting, she captures the sense of floating that she experienced that day - and how that feeling related to her later heart troubles. The black birds are harbingers of disaster. The steering wheel is driven by two hands in purple gloves, which represent the doctors and nurses with disposable gloves who would care for her during the many hospital visits to come. She remembers panicky moments, before and after her surgery, and how the nurses did their best to steer her away from fear. "I had uncertainty about how everything would work out. Is this going to work? The nurses would take time to sit and hold my hand and calm me down. They were wonderful."This is one in a series of paintings that depict Vernon's experience of trying to talk but having the wrong words come out. The first time it happened was at a flower shop, where she went to buy a poinsettia. There, she experienced one in a series of mini-strokes caused by her failing heart. "I could feel my mouth slack on one side. I was working so hard to make the words come out. It scared the person who was looking at me more than it scared me."
Here, Vernon illustrates the first piece of medical equipment she had implanted. The pacemaker and defibrillator device was supposed to keep her heart's rhythm steady and jolt it into action if it stopped. The bolts of lightning represent the electricity needed to keep her alive. The lilies are a sign of resurrection.
'Collapse II'
The three collapses led to a hospital visit, and in August 2011 she had a heart pump called a left ventricular assist device implanted. A year later, her paintings have softened. Gone are the jagged lines and jarring colors. "I feel comfortable with where I am. I have left behind the images of having my body opened and invaded with lots of machinery inside." Here, she wears a hospital cap and cradles the mechanical heart in her hands. "There's no reference to my body being cut up. It's a gentler image. It's much more comforting."
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