Comments (0) | |

Wednesday, Jul. 08, 2009

Artist says thanks with hospital paintings

Betty Westbrook was at The Medical Center of Central Georgia on Tuesday visiting her granddaughter, who just gave birth.

There she met Susan Finch, the wife of a cancer patient, and the two women struck up a cordial conversation. At the end, Finch gave Westbrook a painting of roses, drawn freehand on a page from an artist’s workbook.

By the time Westbrook returned to her granddaughter’s room, she found a second painting — of ladybugs, her granddaughter’s favorite — awaiting her.

“I just thought she was so sweet,” Westbrook said of Finch. “I went back to the maternity ward and the picture was there. ... I don’t know this lady, but this just touched me.”

Westbrook isn’t the only one who has received one of Finch’s gifts.

Finch’s husband, Charles, checked into the hospital June 30 to have cancer surgery. To pass the time and settle her nerves, Susan Finch, 51, turned to painting.

Her creations also allow her to thank hospital workers and cheer up some of the people who are patients or the family of patients at the hospital.

“It’s a way to say thank you for being so nice to my husband,” Finch said. “It’s something to settle my nerves. Any time I get nervous or upset, I start painting.”

Good thing. Otherwise, “I’d be pulling (Charles’) hair out,” she said with a chuckle.

The Finches, who live in Milledgeville, have been at the hospital a week, but in that time Finch estimated that she has turned out at least 14 paintings.

Charles Finch is scheduled to be discharged today, but Susan is in the process of getting a roster of the staff on that floor to make sure each one eventually gets a painting.

Kamiesha Driskell, a clinical technician for the hospital, not only got a painting, but she got Finch to paint roses on her clipboard. It’s not often that patients and their families are able to give back something so personal to the hospital staff, Driskell said.

“She was just in there painting and told (the nurses) to pick out one you like,” Driskell said. “Everybody got one. ... This is the first time I’ve gotten something like this. ... It’s neat.”

It’s not the first time Finch has painted for people in the hospital.

She also did so when her sister was hospitalized last year.

Finch has been painting just since 2006, when her sister got her into an art class before they took a trip to New York.

Though the teacher told the students to sketch out their drawings before painting, Finch said she prefers freehand.

She said the art allows her to express gratitude to the hospital staff.

“As kind as they are to the patients, it feels like I’m giving something back,” she said. “Everybody should thank their health-care workers.”

To contact writer Phillip Ramati, call 744-4334.