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Artistic Process

Oil paintings chronicle treatment for breast cancer

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Day 1: My Right Breast.

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Day 10: Tit Boats.

After retiring from clinical psychology, Sally Loughridge, PhD ’77, became a full-time painter—and when she was diagnosed with breast cancer, she turned to her art for solace and release. Undergoing radiation following surgery, Loughridge (who attended Cornell under the name Sara Blakeslee Ives) resolved to explore the experience by creating one five-by-seven-inch oil painting for each day of treatment. The resulting thirty-three images—each completed in less than twenty minutes with no advance planning—have been published in hardcover by the American Cancer Society as Rad Art: A Journey Through Radiation Treatment. “The paintings themselves were not intended to be art per se; rather, the process of creating them was the critical element in my coping strategy,” she writes in the introduction. “This ritual helped steady me and, at times, surprised me.”

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Day 9: Action (left). Right: Day 11: Out of My Nowhere.

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Day 21: Dream Way (left). Right: Day 22: Swirling.

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