Brad Necyk knows all about sickness, depression, mania, social stigma and isolation.
The accomplished 33-year-old multimedia artist has grappled with these issues most of his life - starting long before he became a graduate student in the Department of Psychiatry in 2015.
"When I was a kid I was really sick. Between the ages of two and 10, I spent a lot of time in hospital. I had a disease with my large intestine so they had to remove part of it," he says.
"The thing that helped me get through that was this really intense focus I had on making art. At all times I was doodling and drawing or whatever. I never considered it to be something I was really passionate about. It was just something I did."
After completing high school in suburban St. Albert, Necyk earned a Bachelor of Commerce Degree at the University of Alberta and went to work for a major bank. But he quickly realized he wasn't cut out for the world of business.
So he went back to school to pursue his real passion - art - and completed a Master of Fine Arts degree in 2013. Unfortunately, sickness had again elbowed its way into his life. This time, in the form of mental illness.
"By that point I was living with and treating bipolar disorder," he says. "So a lot of my research and my art revolved around what it means to be ill, what it means to have a mental illness, and thinking more broadly about psychiatry as a medical discipline."
Necyk's focus on art as a means to explore and illuminate what it means to be sick came to the attention of University of Alberta Hospital. It appointed him as its first artist-in-residence, working specifically with transplant patients.
That in turn got the attention of Dr. Pamela Brett-MacLean, an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Director of the Arts & Humanities in Health & Medicine (AHHM) Program in the U of A's Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry.
"I was hearing about her and she started hearing about me, so we finally met in 2015. She asked what area of medicine I was interested in and I said psychiatry. She said 'That's perfect, I'm in the Department of Psychiatry,'" Necyk recalls.
Necyk promptly enrolled as a PhD student in the Department's Graduate Program, where Brett-MacLean and Dr. Andrew Greenshaw, the Department's Associate Chair-Research, are his co-supervisors.
"Looking back on it, there have been all these serendipitous moments leading from one to the next. When I met Dr. Greenshaw at Research Day three or four years ago, he told me two of his daughters have MFAs, so he completely understands the role of art in medical research."
While working as an artist/researcher on a project on Head and Neck Cancer, and completing his arts-based, research-creation PhD in Psychiatry, Necyk's work has gained increasing acclaim, not only in Canada but internationally.
He is currently a visiting artist/researcher at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto and his work has been shown in Buenos Aires and Chicago. He presented at the 2017 SLSA (Society for Literature, Science and the Arts) Conference in Phoenix, and the 2017 AFPC (Association of Faculties of Pharmacy of Canada) Conference in Quebec.
Necyk sits on the boards of several professional bodies and is a scholar at the IHI (Integrative Health Institute) at the University of Alberta.
He also teaches senior courses in drawing and intermedia at the U of A and MacEwan University, covering photography, video, sound, 3D-modeling, interactive electronics, performance, relational works, sculpture, and installation.
Yet, despite the growing recognition he has received, some still struggle to understand the value of what he does, or how it fits within the conventional context of psychiatric research.
"Even at this year's Research Day event, a student raised her hand and said 'What's your research question?' Well, I don't have a research question. I'm just exploring. I'm not explaining things. I'm trying to find new insights and create new spaces for ideas to form, so maybe we'll come to some new understandings," he says.
"Maybe somewhere down the line somebody is going to figure out something to focus on as a researcher that my work has uncovered. But I'm not going to do that kind of research. That's not what I'm trained to do. It sounds like a weird thing to do, just spending time with people who are sick, but when you meet the right person and pay the right amount of attention to them, things emerge from that."
Necyk recounts how one patient began reciting poetry to him, just one day after receiving a new heart transplant. Together, they subsequently created a sculpture that reflected the patient's desires to escape the confines of his hospital room.
On another occasion, Necyk travelled to Iqaluit, Nunavut, to attend a conference that focused on the remote northern territory's sky-high suicide rates.
"I came up with this idea to do an image theatre workshop where we created images with our bodies. Some really interesting things emerged from that and we made a photo series out of it together. It was a really meaningful experience," he says.
Working with Head and Neck Cancer patients over the past three years has been especially challenging and rewarding, says Necyk, who recently participated in a successful art exhibition with his patient group in Chicago.
"The most important thing for them is being able to tell their story, so people can really feel what the experience of living with Head and Neck Cancer is like, including hearing the diagnosis, going through the treatments, the after-effects of all the surgeries, the chemotherapy, the radiation, the scarring, the loss of your voice and your tongue and your face," he says.
"And then, people look at them like they're monsters. They just want people to understand 'Hey, I'm still a person. It's just that this horrible thing happened to me but somehow I've endured.' I think that is probably the most concrete thing I get out of everybody. They want people to understand their illness and what their life is like, and not to judge them poorly based on that."
It is often said that great art arises from great pain and suffering. If that's so, it seems to align with Necyk's own experience.
"Last June I went manic. It was the worst manic episode of my life. I didn't know it at the time but every time I embed myself in these illness communities I get really sick, and that's what happened with the psychiatric patients at CAMH. But then I started writing about it and all the events of the past three or four years, and I created a short film about it," he says.
"Then I adapted it into a play. It premiers in October at the CAMH in Toronto. So it's part of a film festival at CAMH, but I got permission to present the play in the hospital, which will be really cool. It's about being in an institution. It's a fictionalized work, but it's based on real events," he adds.
"A lot of my work is about opening up room for dialogue. I have 15 or 18 exhibitions a year now, so it's just insane. My focus has moved from just trying to be an artist to trying to be an advocate for social change. That is where I've moved my career to now. I do that through the art I make, through the communities I'm now part of, and being part of the Department of Psychiatry."
The accomplished 33-year-old multimedia artist has grappled with these issues most of his life - starting long before he became a graduate student in the Department of Psychiatry in 2015.
"When I was a kid I was really sick. Between the ages of two and 10, I spent a lot of time in hospital. I had a disease with my large intestine so they had to remove part of it," he says.
"The thing that helped me get through that was this really intense focus I had on making art. At all times I was doodling and drawing or whatever. I never considered it to be something I was really passionate about. It was just something I did."
After completing high school in suburban St. Albert, Necyk earned a Bachelor of Commerce Degree at the University of Alberta and went to work for a major bank. But he quickly realized he wasn't cut out for the world of business.
So he went back to school to pursue his real passion - art - and completed a Master of Fine Arts degree in 2013. Unfortunately, sickness had again elbowed its way into his life. This time, in the form of mental illness.
"By that point I was living with and treating bipolar disorder," he says. "So a lot of my research and my art revolved around what it means to be ill, what it means to have a mental illness, and thinking more broadly about psychiatry as a medical discipline."
Necyk's focus on art as a means to explore and illuminate what it means to be sick came to the attention of University of Alberta Hospital. It appointed him as its first artist-in-residence, working specifically with transplant patients.
That in turn got the attention of Dr. Pamela Brett-MacLean, an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Director of the Arts & Humanities in Health & Medicine (AHHM) Program in the U of A's Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry.
"I was hearing about her and she started hearing about me, so we finally met in 2015. She asked what area of medicine I was interested in and I said psychiatry. She said 'That's perfect, I'm in the Department of Psychiatry,'" Necyk recalls.
Necyk promptly enrolled as a PhD student in the Department's Graduate Program, where Brett-MacLean and Dr. Andrew Greenshaw, the Department's Associate Chair-Research, are his co-supervisors.
"Looking back on it, there have been all these serendipitous moments leading from one to the next. When I met Dr. Greenshaw at Research Day three or four years ago, he told me two of his daughters have MFAs, so he completely understands the role of art in medical research."
While working as an artist/researcher on a project on Head and Neck Cancer, and completing his arts-based, research-creation PhD in Psychiatry, Necyk's work has gained increasing acclaim, not only in Canada but internationally.
He is currently a visiting artist/researcher at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto and his work has been shown in Buenos Aires and Chicago. He presented at the 2017 SLSA (Society for Literature, Science and the Arts) Conference in Phoenix, and the 2017 AFPC (Association of Faculties of Pharmacy of Canada) Conference in Quebec.
Necyk sits on the boards of several professional bodies and is a scholar at the IHI (Integrative Health Institute) at the University of Alberta.
He also teaches senior courses in drawing and intermedia at the U of A and MacEwan University, covering photography, video, sound, 3D-modeling, interactive electronics, performance, relational works, sculpture, and installation.
Yet, despite the growing recognition he has received, some still struggle to understand the value of what he does, or how it fits within the conventional context of psychiatric research.
"Even at this year's Research Day event, a student raised her hand and said 'What's your research question?' Well, I don't have a research question. I'm just exploring. I'm not explaining things. I'm trying to find new insights and create new spaces for ideas to form, so maybe we'll come to some new understandings," he says.
"Maybe somewhere down the line somebody is going to figure out something to focus on as a researcher that my work has uncovered. But I'm not going to do that kind of research. That's not what I'm trained to do. It sounds like a weird thing to do, just spending time with people who are sick, but when you meet the right person and pay the right amount of attention to them, things emerge from that."
Necyk recounts how one patient began reciting poetry to him, just one day after receiving a new heart transplant. Together, they subsequently created a sculpture that reflected the patient's desires to escape the confines of his hospital room.
On another occasion, Necyk travelled to Iqaluit, Nunavut, to attend a conference that focused on the remote northern territory's sky-high suicide rates.
"I came up with this idea to do an image theatre workshop where we created images with our bodies. Some really interesting things emerged from that and we made a photo series out of it together. It was a really meaningful experience," he says.
Working with Head and Neck Cancer patients over the past three years has been especially challenging and rewarding, says Necyk, who recently participated in a successful art exhibition with his patient group in Chicago.
"The most important thing for them is being able to tell their story, so people can really feel what the experience of living with Head and Neck Cancer is like, including hearing the diagnosis, going through the treatments, the after-effects of all the surgeries, the chemotherapy, the radiation, the scarring, the loss of your voice and your tongue and your face," he says.
"And then, people look at them like they're monsters. They just want people to understand 'Hey, I'm still a person. It's just that this horrible thing happened to me but somehow I've endured.' I think that is probably the most concrete thing I get out of everybody. They want people to understand their illness and what their life is like, and not to judge them poorly based on that."
It is often said that great art arises from great pain and suffering. If that's so, it seems to align with Necyk's own experience.
"Last June I went manic. It was the worst manic episode of my life. I didn't know it at the time but every time I embed myself in these illness communities I get really sick, and that's what happened with the psychiatric patients at CAMH. But then I started writing about it and all the events of the past three or four years, and I created a short film about it," he says.
"Then I adapted it into a play. It premiers in October at the CAMH in Toronto. So it's part of a film festival at CAMH, but I got permission to present the play in the hospital, which will be really cool. It's about being in an institution. It's a fictionalized work, but it's based on real events," he adds.
"A lot of my work is about opening up room for dialogue. I have 15 or 18 exhibitions a year now, so it's just insane. My focus has moved from just trying to be an artist to trying to be an advocate for social change. That is where I've moved my career to now. I do that through the art I make, through the communities I'm now part of, and being part of the Department of Psychiatry."