What am I doing here? Making sense of why I am drawing in an empty care home residents’ lounge
As an integral part of my practice-led PhD research into how drawing can help us to understand loss in the elderly, the ill and the dying, I make reportage drawings in residential care homes. This account focusses on a private care home, where I draw, in the residents’ absence, in their communal lou...
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| Language: | English |
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Taylor & Francis Group
2025-12-01
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| Series: | Cogent Gerontology |
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| Online Access: | https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/10.1080/28324897.2025.2487049 |
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| author | Ellen Bell |
| author_facet | Ellen Bell |
| author_sort | Ellen Bell |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | As an integral part of my practice-led PhD research into how drawing can help us to understand loss in the elderly, the ill and the dying, I make reportage drawings in residential care homes. This account focusses on a private care home, where I draw, in the residents’ absence, in their communal lounge. Choosing to draw in absentia enables me to discover, akin to Affect Theory, whether, by placing my body in the residents’ daily space, and thus sharing the same aural, visual and olfactory atmosphere that they do, I—via a sensate empathy brought on by the act of drawing—understand something of what they may have lost in finding themselves there. Though usually associated with on-the-spot news-gathering, and harking back to the nineteenth-century mode of visual reporting for the illustrated newspapers, such actively-present drawing—exemplified contemporarily by artists like Lucinda Rogers and Linda Kitson—continues to be at the core of contemporary reportage drawing. And though putting myself in their places may not directly impact upon the residents of this home, my intention is that the knowledge I gain from such drawn-witnessing informs my drawings and, in turn, empathically affect the viewers of them. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-74058ab9c23b46ec8edccd5757d3d26d |
| institution | OA Journals |
| issn | 2832-4897 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2025-12-01 |
| publisher | Taylor & Francis Group |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Cogent Gerontology |
| spelling | doaj-art-74058ab9c23b46ec8edccd5757d3d26d2025-08-20T02:16:33ZengTaylor & Francis GroupCogent Gerontology2832-48972025-12-014110.1080/28324897.2025.2487049What am I doing here? Making sense of why I am drawing in an empty care home residents’ loungeEllen Bell0School of Art, Leeds Beckett University, Leeds, United KingdomAs an integral part of my practice-led PhD research into how drawing can help us to understand loss in the elderly, the ill and the dying, I make reportage drawings in residential care homes. This account focusses on a private care home, where I draw, in the residents’ absence, in their communal lounge. Choosing to draw in absentia enables me to discover, akin to Affect Theory, whether, by placing my body in the residents’ daily space, and thus sharing the same aural, visual and olfactory atmosphere that they do, I—via a sensate empathy brought on by the act of drawing—understand something of what they may have lost in finding themselves there. Though usually associated with on-the-spot news-gathering, and harking back to the nineteenth-century mode of visual reporting for the illustrated newspapers, such actively-present drawing—exemplified contemporarily by artists like Lucinda Rogers and Linda Kitson—continues to be at the core of contemporary reportage drawing. And though putting myself in their places may not directly impact upon the residents of this home, my intention is that the knowledge I gain from such drawn-witnessing informs my drawings and, in turn, empathically affect the viewers of them.https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/10.1080/28324897.2025.2487049Dementiacare homesdrawinglossreportage drawing |
| spellingShingle | Ellen Bell What am I doing here? Making sense of why I am drawing in an empty care home residents’ lounge Cogent Gerontology Dementia care homes drawing loss reportage drawing |
| title | What am I doing here? Making sense of why I am drawing in an empty care home residents’ lounge |
| title_full | What am I doing here? Making sense of why I am drawing in an empty care home residents’ lounge |
| title_fullStr | What am I doing here? Making sense of why I am drawing in an empty care home residents’ lounge |
| title_full_unstemmed | What am I doing here? Making sense of why I am drawing in an empty care home residents’ lounge |
| title_short | What am I doing here? Making sense of why I am drawing in an empty care home residents’ lounge |
| title_sort | what am i doing here making sense of why i am drawing in an empty care home residents lounge |
| topic | Dementia care homes drawing loss reportage drawing |
| url | https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/10.1080/28324897.2025.2487049 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT ellenbell whatamidoingheremakingsenseofwhyiamdrawinginanemptycarehomeresidentslounge |