“Painting through the Pain”

Painting through the Pain

Perrysburg native records recovery from head trauma in painting displayed at St. Fancis Centre

By
Nancy Kleinhenz

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December 16, 1997

The Advertiser Tribune Griffin, Ohio

December 16, 1997

It was the proverbial time of her life.” She was an undergraduate art student traveling in Cairo, Egypt, with a friend. Suddenly, on a drive to the Sinai Desert, the axle on their car failed. When the crashing and careening ceased, her friend was dead and Bitten Foster was in a coma, brought on by severe head injuries.

It would be five days before the Perrysburg Native regained consciousness. She was alive, but her life was a total blank. The pain and frustration of the two ensuing years of relearning to walk talk and be herself eventually found an outlet.

“Bittin’s Peace: Seven Inner women” is an 11x11 foot, 3 dimensional painting depicting a struggle back to wellness.. The work has found a permanent home inside St. Francis Health Care Center in Green Springs, where it has become a symbol of hope to others recovering from traumatic brain injury.

My experience has with making it was…it created itself. I was just a vehicle that it came through. I gave myself over to it. Said Bittin via telephone from her Seattle home. The artist will share her story in person 5-6pm Thursday at the Saint Francis Centre, located at 401 N. Broadway St.

“Bittin’s Peace” is constructed in ten panels. Each panel is a canvas made from the artists medical journals onto which she transcribed her journal entries. Growing up from the bottom most panel, and stretching across all the others, is a foreboding tree. It’s dark trunk and each of it’s six branches bear the shape of a female figure.

The Seven Women are like parts of me that have changed by the injury, “said Bittin, whose unusual name is Norwegian nickname for Elisabeth.

The tree is made from a concoction of the artist design. She recycled Styrofoam packaging peanuts, using a juicer to pulverize them and mix them with flour water and glue. Although the frame of the piece took her two months to complete, the painting was finished in five weeks.

“God I was impassioned to make it. I would work 6, 8 up to thirteen hours at a time on this” said the artist, who continues to revise the name of her work. ‘Now I am calling it breaking boundaries.’ I think that expresses what I was going through.”

The image of the tree was inspired by an analogy healthcare workers used to explain her injury to her.

“They said how in brain damage it’s like there are two parts of a tree that are not communicating with each other. I had begun to draw to heal myself and that image of the tree just kept coming through me,” she said.

Bittin’s artwork and daily journal were only part of her long recovery. She had to go through speech and physical therapy to learn to talk and walk. There also were sessions with psychologists, “because I really wasn’t happy. I forgot everything. I couldn’t even remember who I was.”

With her family encouragement, Bittin returned to the University of Colorado in January 1990. She graduated the following year, completing “Bittin’s Peace” that fall. Shortly afterward, she mounted a show of her work titled “Tree-to Tree Recovery.” The 66-piece exhibit followed her life through artwork done before, during and after the accident. It’s success led to a road tour of the show.

“I was on the road with it nine times in 14 months///Toledo,” said Bittin. It was there the artist made arrangements to hang “Bittin’s Peace” in a local coffee shop and it caught the attention of a physical therapist from St. Francis. The rehabilitation facility purchased the painting and put it on permanent display in its gymnasium to inspire patients.

Bittin’s appearance at the facility also is designed to be inspirational. The artist will speak about “Growing Through It,” a program she designed that uses art to help head trauma victims work through recovery. Bittin since has adapted the program to aid anyone who feels out of touch with themselves. She is pursuing a master’s degree at Antioch University in Seattle to further her work.

“I’m going to school to learn how to be a more whole person so I can go out in the world and help other people be more whole persons,” said Bittin, who has suffered some permanent damage from her head injury.

“What I’ve been given...I’ve been given this wonderful life…the stuff I’ve lost is so nothing compared to the quality of my life. I’m so grateful for my life-to walk and talk-I don’t even care about the things I lost because of the accident,” she said.