What Lawrence’s Story Tells Health Researchers About Arts-Based Interactions

Abstract

In arts-based-research, knowledge and meaning emerge from people's experiences of being in dynamic, ambiguous, intentional, and ethical relationships with each other and the arts. This case study draws on Launer's "7 C's" (context, conversations, curiosity, complexity, challenge, caution, and care) to understand the aesthetics (shape and form) and ethics of relationships between an artist-researcher and patient-sitter in portraiture-based medical research. This case supports the 7 C's being embodied in the art-making process, as the approach can usefully frame ethical challenges and rewards of portraiture-based health research for artist-researcher and patient-participant. CareEthics of care (EoC) is a normative ethical framework that views moral action in terms of interpersonal relationships, with care and benevolence as core virtues. Because this ethical framework reflects the relationship between carers and patients, we decided to explore its usefulness for artist-sitter and researcher-participant relationships in a portraiture-based medical research (PBMR) study. 1 Launer has proposed that context, conversations, curiosity, complexity, challenge, caution, and care (the "7 C's") can help scholars understand the relationships between doctors and patients. 2,3 Since many of these themes overlap with EoC, we decided to use Launer's 7 C's to explore the EoC in the interactions and relationships between the first author-Scottish artist-researcher, Mark Gilbert (M.G.)-and sitter-participant, Lawrence. This case report was drawn from the Giving, Receiving, Observing and Witnessing Care (GROWing Care) Study, which investigated the experience of older adults and their partners in care. 4 We examined artworks, transcripts from conversations, and semi-structured interviews between artist-researcher and sitterparticipant, as well as artist journal reflections.