Pure Inspiration: Michelle MacNaught

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As I look over this steep ledge at the reality of being an adult, I have learned that If Michelle taught me anything, it is not to be afraid of what’s to come.

Michelle MacNaught was a senior here at Purchase studying in the Visual Arts Conservatory. She was diagnosed with stage IV Ovarian cancer, and lived only 13 months longer. As a 21-year-old woman, she was facing the grim reality that time was limited.

Instead of attending therapy to cope with her cancer, Michelle poured her heart and soul into her artwork. She could not attend classes due to frequently needed treatment at Sloan Kettering in New York City, so she worked mostly from her hospital bed and from home, in DeLancey New York.

Michelle developed a collection of woodcuts and lithographs that paralleled her life battling with cancer. One series included nine self-portrait woodcuts. In each, she wore a headpiece with different names of chemo treatments she was receiving. As the prints progress, the negative space becomes more dominate. This was Michelle’s way of expressing the relationship between the medicine and the person becoming one.

One of the most haunting pieces is entitled “Can-Cer-Vive”. It is a collage of her medical papers and diagnosis, in which she transferred a full body woodcut of herself onto. She then made sculptural paper models of her cancer, proportionate to the tumors in her body and added them to the piece. “I decided I wanted to destroy it with a shotgun,” Michelle explained in an interview, and she did. She sat in a chair in her backyard while her family filmed her shoot the artwork, and she then let her friends and family take a shot at it as well as their own way of healing.

Michelle was awarded the opportunity for her work to be exhibited at the Leo Koenig Gallery in Manhattan on November 15, 2011, where over 300 guests attended. She was flown byhelicopter from her home to Sloan Kettering where they drove her by ambulance to the gallery, just so she could see her dream as an artist come true. Michelle died only five days after she attended her gallery opening.

I was inspired to start this blog because of Michelle. As many students like myself are learning how to handle the anxiety of getting the boot in to the real world, Michelle is an inspirational reminder that anything you want for yourself is attainable.

Pictures credited to Michelle MacNaught’s website and facebook page

~ by purchasepeaking on February 13, 2012.