Gerry
Gerry has nearly 40 years of working in the arts, mainly as a poet and an artist. He talks about the importance of art as a form of creative expression and therapeutic healing in the community and hospitals.
Name: Gerry Loose
Years:1980s – present
Gerry has nearly 40 years of working in the arts, mainly as a poet and an artist. He talks about the importance of art as a form of creative expression and therapeutic healing in the community and hospitals.
He recounts how his background in natural landscapes has shaped his work and discusses the changing views on mental health throughout this time.
Excerpts:
“And at one point when I had a sort of…my own personal breakdown, I wrote a series of poems about that which were published as a book later … being able to speak about it as an artist in something that has a permanent record … was a wonderful thing to do.”
“I’m not a great fan of enormous works of art like the Angel of the North, that’s great, that’s fine, it’s wonderful, but you can’t actively engage in it, you still only look at the damn thing.”