Twenty years ago, Philadelphia artist Terrence Gore was told he had just one month to live. Now he has a first-of-its-kind exhibit that shows the healing powers of art and nature.
Gore has had a lifelong love affair with Bartram’s Garden. The public garden in Southwest Philly is now the place he finds inspiration for his art, which is now on display inside the historic Bartram House.
“As a child, I always yearned to come into this house, but it was not accessible,” Gore said.
He grew up next door at Bartram Village, a public housing project that became his playground.
“I saw this place as my own space, like I was the richest person,” Gore said.
Nature gives him the strength to live with brain lesions and partial paralysis on his right side, complications from HIV and AIDS.
Gore learned how to paint left-handed, even though he was right-handed.
“This diagnosis is really, really a monster,” Gore said.
But he finds art in nature quiets that monster. He doesn’t just paint: In Gore’s works, he incorporates material he finds in the garden, like branches, grass and seeds.
The show is titled “Back to my Roots,” a reference to Gore’s past and his use of material from right off the ground.
One piece called “We Stick Together” shows a family made from pieces of bark.
A piece titled “We Stick Together” is made of tree bark.
Gore says art has helped him endure the medical hardships.
“Every time I felt myself sinking, I start creating something, and it builds this new energy in me,” Gore said. “And it’s just like, ‘wow, look at that.’ Somehow, I forget all about that stage of depression.”
Dr. Brian Litt, Gore’s neurologist at Penn Medicine, said nature and art can be therapeutic.
“He has a challenging regimen,” Litt said. “There is this element of therapy, his own therapy, by his intellectual and artistic expression.”
For Gore, the art show at Bartram is a dream come true. He said someday he’d like to teach art therapy because he knows how healing it can be.