An artist has dedicated the last decade to drawing portraits of patients undergoing cancer treatment.
Simon Tolhurst, 55, has made hundreds of sketches of people at the Haematology Cancer Care University College London Hospitals (UCLH) in Marylebone as a ‘unique, intimate experience’.
He began volunteering as an artist in residence in 2013 and spends every Thursday at the centre creating A4 pencil drawings of patients as gifts to them.
Mr Tolhurst, who now also works as a fundraising officer for the UCLH Charity, which oversee the drawing project, spoke of the ‘fascinating’ people he has met during the 10 years, and his plans to create an exhibition of the 389 portraits he’s completed.
Mr Tolhurst, from Camden said: ‘I’ve met so many incredible people in this project and been privileged to make portraits of people in that situation.
‘There’s a roomful of people who are a little bit bored because they’re having to stay in one chair whilst connected to an IV treatment to have their chemo – and they’re very receptive to having someone to chat to and maybe making a drawing.
‘I never know who I’m going to draw when I go in there, who I’m going to meet, what they do and what could pop up in the conversation.
‘I don’t know of another situation where someone’s going into (that) environment and drawing people during treatments.
‘I feel as though it’s a little bit unique for that.’
Mr Tolhurst, who has been an artist his whole life, first foray into portrait drawing was when he worked in the union building of the University of London, and students would sit for him.
He says his role drawing cancer patients has led to a myriad of ‘uplifting’ and ‘moving’ stories and memories which have stayed with him, including a ‘bucket list’ family portrait for a patient who was terminal.
In one of his more uplifting recollections, Mr Tolhurst spoke of a patient receiving Car T-cell therapy, a specialist type of treatment where cells are extracted and introduced back into the bloodstream to recognise and attack cancer cells.
Mr Tolhurst said: ‘I drew a gentleman, just before Christmas, where he was an inpatient, and I’d met him because he was donating a photograph to charity.
‘We were chatting for a little while and he’s a really nice guy. And he was very, very ill at the time.
‘But he was having something called Car T-cell treatment… And I went back each week to say hello – and he was getting better and better each week.
‘And on the third week, he was out of bed, sitting in a chair, posing for a portrait for me whilst the members of staff came in to say, ‘I heard you’re going home tomorrow, I just wanted to come in and say hi,’ and examples like that… they’re really uplifting.’
He recalls another time when a patient was unable to undergo treatment because her blood pressure was too high.
He said: ‘I said to her, ‘Well, posing can be quite relaxing, quite meditative. Shall we try and make the drawing and see what happens with that?’
‘And I think about 45 minutes into the drawing when the staff came back to take her blood pressure, she was back down within the treatable range.
‘It was just brilliant and she was thrilled.
‘And she said to me afterwards, “You’ve shown me something; with the diagnosis and the treatments, I’ve been so stressed out and so worried about everything that I haven’t found time to relax and to de-stress from it.”‘
Mr Tolhurst said the emotional side of the role still ‘hits’ him every now and then.
He said: ‘I like the portrait to look back at the viewer and in order to do that, I have to ask the person posing for me to look back at me whilst making the drawing.
‘And that eye contact is incredibly intimate; it’s something that we don’t do with strangers. But I really like that dynamic… You do feel quite close to people.’
Mr Tolhurst also praised the ‘brilliant’ charity that has allowed the project to flourish in a clinical space.
While he could not volunteer during the pandemic, he was asked to draw a series of hospital staff members via video call by the hospital’s arts and heritage team, a task he said was “wonderful”.
‘It was nice to refocus on the staff,’ he added.
‘They’re doing an amazing job because it’s extremely precise what they have to do with the treatments.
‘But at the same time, they’ve got to have that level of empathy and care and humaneness.
‘It just feels like a very worthwhile use of this skill to be able to make accurate portraits in a busy environment, and it doesn’t cost me anything – it’s just time and pencils and paper.’
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at [email protected].
For more stories like this, check our news page.
