The Healing Power of Evergreen Hospital’s Art

IN MAY my wife gave birth to our daughter Charlotte at ’s state-of-the-art Family Maternity Center.  The labor experience, even though joyous, was a trying one.  Thankfully, the birth was made easier by Evergreen’s strategic use of art at its facility.

It’s a simple, yet powerful concept: art can heal.  Many psychologists believe that art affects the human brain in a different way than other everyday objects.  Art has deep emotional impacts on the brain and stimulates both its right and left hemispheres.  Studies show that art can significantly improve a person’s mood and can reduce negative mood parameters like sadness.  People shown visual art have also registered decreased systolic blood pressure.  

Just as the brain is affected by art, art too is affected by the brain.  For example, established as a school of art by André Breton, Surrealism goes hand-in-glove with Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis.  The genre is a visual attempt by artists like Salvador Dalí to unlock the mind’s subconscious world first revealed by Freud.

Given the relationship between art, the human brain, and healing, it is no surprise that Kirkland’s Evergreen Hospital incorporates art at its facility to enhance its healing environment.  With the help of the art consultant – an original member of Kirkland’s Cultural Council – permanent collections may be viewed in the Hospital’s public areas, which include works in oil, watercolor, acrylic, pastel, monotype, collage, glass, clay, copper, bronze and steel. 

New local artists are also featured in the Hospital’s visiting galleries.  Currently, the Hospital is featuring works by Rebecca Haines (original photography), Pat Hitchens (original watercolor paintings on silk), and Katherine L. Wright (original watercolor paintings). 

The great Bard himself, William Shakespeare, talking about the healing power of music, likely put it best when he wrote: “When griping grief the heart doth wound and doleful dumps the mind oppresses, then music, with her silver sound with speedy help doth lend redress.”

It’s highly doubtful that during labor my wife would have appreciated Shakespeare’s lofty iambic pentameter.  But what we both did appreciate was the healing influence of Evergreen’s artistic ambiance. 

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Trent Latta is an attorney and a current member of Kirkland's Cultural Council. He may be contacted at TrentLatta@gmail.com.