Let art open the window of our mind

“Although we cannot control the length of our life, we can make it wider.” Rare Mind Painting Classes was started in this belief in 2004. We invited resourceful teachers and built an artistic stage just for the rare patients, encouraging patients and their families to cultivate their interest, build up interpersonal relationship and gradually restore the interaction with society. Patients can express the deepest feeling in their mind and transfer their emotions into delicate patterns and colors, showing the value of their lives.

At the beginning of rare mind painting classes, teacher Lotus Wang didn’t treat the patients differently. Instead, Lotus treated the patients as the normal and taught all her knowledge of art. She dealt with different situations of each patient patiently, exploring their unlimited possibilities. As students increase gradually, rare mind painting classes started afternoon session We hold charity exhibition as well as publish almanac every year to share the fruitful result of the year with the public.

As the number of students increased a lot in 2010 and there is a wide age gap between the students, we separated all the students into senior and junior classes. We also invited teacher Weimin Lin and Jingwen Bai one after another into teaching. Teachers arranged a wide variety of classes such as seeing exhibitions and painting outdoors. Teachers keep in company with the growth of rare mind painting classes. Except for rich curricula, teachers focus more on the sharing after classes. By clearly expressing their own works, children have improved their oral skill and self-confidence.

Time flies, and many little patients at that time get connection with art because of rare mind painting classes. They chose painting or art while making life decision. Art is not only for mind healing, but also what affects students’ careers. Rare mind painting classes is happy to discover and train those talented people. It is better to teach one how to fish than give him/her a fish. It will be rare painting classes’ next goal to let more artist with rare disease grow stronger.