As Covid-19 heightens the anxieties of cancer patients, online support groups step up efforts to help by means of social networking. One such group, Twist Out Cancer, sponsors an innovative program called Brushes With Cancer that matches patients with artists who create a unique piece of artwork to capture the experience of their disease.

When I first heard about Brushes With Cancer, I was predisposed in its favor because I have witnessed firsthand the transformative capacity of the visual arts. Generally, I forewarn prospective patient-readers about the depressing account of ovarian cancer in my book “Memoir of a Debulked Woman”; however, one stranger’s response elated me. Juliet R. Harrison sent me an art object that made the darkness visible. She had gutted the book — cut into its cover, torn out most of its pages — and then sutured it back together with splints, paste, fragmented words and wire. Broken, hollowed and rebound, it concretized the evisceration I had tried to protest.

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