Chana Snyder

IT TOOK DECADES FOR CHANA SNYDER TO BE COMFORTABLE CALLING HERSELF AN “ARTIST.” BUT WHEN HER BODY DECIDED TO GO WITH THE “CANCER PATIENT” INSTEAD, SHE HAD TO FIGHT AGAIN TO RE-DRAW THAT LABEL. 

By Chana Snyder

I am an artist. It’s taken me 30 years, give or take, to realize this label and wear it with any measure of confidence. Of course, the multitudes of my life mean wearing other labels as well, and most of them I do so gladly: writer, mother, spouse, hockey fan. Others I wear less enthusiastically. Adult child of an alcoholic. Cancer survivor.

As the saying goes, it’s the journey and not the destination that makes life fulfilling. My journey to creating fine art is full alright: full of overgrown paths and switchbacks and other would-be obstacles. Looking back over the journey shows me how, despite all of life’s better attempts to cover it up or peel it away, the artist label just keeps sticking.

*****

The pencil tin has a vintage, almost other-worldly feel. Of course, the pencils and their case are other-worldly. They are artist-grade Derwent watercolor pencils, imported from England. I am 14, the youngest child of a low income family on Cape Cod. Money is tight in our house. There are few to no circumstances that justify the expense for nice and indulgent things like these pencils, and I know this. I stare at them endlessly, lost somewhere between the luxury and improbability of owning them

I know that I can’t just stare at the pencils, that I must actually use them. I will use them. I am in my fourth summer at the Children’s School of Science in Woods Hole, finally enrolled in the coveted Biological Illustration course reserved for high school students. I’d matured past the Marine Biology and Geology courses that I’d taken as a bookish and gawky pre-teen and was so ready to explore the intersection of science and fine art.

During those all-too-quick weeks, I insatiably consume the instructor’s lessons for rendering anatomy and creating visual records of the natural world: the curve of lily petals, the way light drapes over a scallop shell, the pattern of a monarch’s wings. One of the drawing techniques we learn is pointillism, the tedious hell-on-earth experience of interpreting form and light and shadow with hand-drawn dots. The instructor balances the technical challenge of the lesson with an easy subject matter, pea plants, but still. Dots. One. At. A. Time. I am in heaven. Without realizing, I have let go of the expectations that are shaping me and am leaning on my strengths to do something exciting and enthralling and just for me. I am creating artwork. Real artwork, that exudes skill and confidence and creative essence that I didn’t know was possible.

Summer ends, and I begin high school. Navigating the social and academic traps of being a teenager takes over. Any thought I might have had of pursuing artwork gives way to honors classes and college prep. Outside of school, my home life crumbles into a sinkhole of dysfunction. With my parents’ divorce on the fast-approaching horizon, there simply is no space in my life for anything so seemingly indulgent as fine art. My pencils stay in their tin case.

“Two decades later, I’m a stay-at-home mother of two young kids. I’d gone to college, started a career, married, started a family, and checked off all the boxes of how I’d ever imagined my adult life. I’ve let parenthood and domestic life swallow me, let some of my personal labels fade, but it’s a tradeoff I’m willing to make to break the cycle of dysfunction that smothered my own childhood. Most of the time, my days are busy and my heart is full.”

One day I come across my watercolor pencils and other materials from Biological Illustration. It all stops me in my tracks. The tin, a bit worn now, is a time machine, and transports me right back to being 14. The wondrous feeling of creating work from my observations of the world instantly floods my mind. I stare at the pencils, lost somewhere between nostalgia and possibility.

I know that I can’t just stare at them, that I must actually use them. I will use them. 

*****

“Chana, it’s positive.”

“What is?”

“The test results, the biopsy. It’s cancer.”

“Wait, what? Whose test results? Who has cancer? Mike, what are you talking about??” 

“On September 14, 2012, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I was 35 years old. No family history, no risk factors. I’d never smoked, nursed both my kids, done all the right things. I had no reason to ever even consider that any serious illness, let alone a life-threatening one, would gain entry into my world.”

In the span of that brief phone call, I learned the sickening, tingly, tense sensation of my fight-or- flight response, because I was instantly in the fight of my life. For my life. In one violent motion, my diagnosis ripped away all the labels of my mid-30s persona and replaced them with another: cancer patient.

Or so I thought. As the days following my diagnosis turned into weeks and I circled the wagons of friends and family around me, it became a coping mechanism to hold fast to those labels, hold fast to the things that made me Me. I gripped them close, and refused to let cancer take any of the space I’d reserved for these good and treasured parts of my life.

I was so scared. But I was still me.

I began journaling, because that’s what writers do, use words to make sense of the world. I tended my family in all the ways I knew, because that’s what caretakers do. We hosted Thanksgiving, because we always have and I didn’t want that year to be any different. I didn’t miss a single hockey game with my kids, because hockey is...hockey. If you know, you know.

Lastly, I made a vow to do right by 14-year-old me, who reveled in the drawing skills she learned in Biological Illustration. Skills that had unlocked amazement in her own capability, but that she’d abandoned to survive the gauntlet of high school and the disintegration of her family.

I hate it. I hate all of it. The appointments, the consultations, the phone calls, the updates to family and friends, the IVs and blood draws. Sharing the news with people I don’t want to hurt. Well- meaning doctors and nurses, who want to see me well but have lost touch with their inner patients. How creatively can we torture you, body and mind, all in the sake of imaging and diagnostics? The back-handed compliment that ‘you have beautiful pelvic anatomy’ as the ultrasound tech maneuvers the probe between my legs. Learning from the plastic surgeon that breast conservation, such a great option and so important to so many women, may leave me disfigured. The all-too casual comment that ‘your kids will really have trouble when you lose your eyebrows.’ What about me? What about the trouble I’m having already? Or that I will have when my hair, thick and lush and my defining feature since my first breath, falls out and IS GONE?

How will I be? My tears blur the keyboard and monitor, both beautiful feats of technology that my husband dutifully bought this week out of sympathy and helplessness. Yes, a new computer. Yes, new bedroom furniture. Anything, everything to temporarily make this go away. What he can’t make go away is that my hair will go away. My breast will go away. What of me will be left?

Nine years later, there’s plenty of Me here. Some old Me, some new Me, but all Chana.

No two people go through cancer — or survivorship — the same way. I have good days and bad days. Cancer left its mark on me physically and mentally. It took a few years to wade through the raw anxiety and trauma while I relearned how to feel safe in my own body and within my life. When I wasn’t drowning in fear, I was crushed by survivor’s guilt. I leaned heavily on my therapist who helped me learn to accept my survivorship and live each day with gratitude.

And I clung to the labels of my life just as I had during treatment. My identity was my life raft. I had to focus on my life and not the illness that threatened it. Parenting. Housework (so much housework). Hockey games. And art classes.

The promise I made to my 14-year-old self was top of mind as I settled into post-cancer living. I could no longer put off this thing that was so enriching and fulfilling. That promise buffered many of the insecurities I felt trying my hand at visual art. Imposter syndrome, anyone? It also drew out my 14-year-old determination. Just like Teenager Me, I was determined to learn, determined to grow, determined to survive.

Ironically, my pencils stay in their case. In that first adult art class the instructor introduced us to soft pastels, a dry medium of pure pigment, pure color, pure magic. Pastels are forgiving, immediate, multi-faceted. Exactly what I needed, when I needed it. The tactile nature of the medium is what I love most. Each color of each brand has a slightly different feel, and those nuances of touch make up the essence of the expression and storytelling a pastellist infuses into each piece.

Practicing artwork has taught me to take risks. Make mistakes. Trust myself. It’s shown me how to focus on the big picture and find the values. It’s helped me shed my perfectionist tendencies and not get lost in the details. That label — calling myself an artist — is more like a patch, one that healed and helped me become whole.

Chana Snyder, of Evegreen Artworks works exclusively in pastel. She is a self-taught artist, but has been mentored by artists which include Ruthe Sholler and Donna Rossetti-Bailey. Chana set up her first studio in 2019. Her work has been shown all over Boston’s South Shore as well as on instagram @evergreenartworks and at www.evergreenartworks.weebly.com.