A bright spot for this chilly winter day: an article from the D&C about Bernadette Bos- honorary member of the Main Street Artists on the 4th floor!

Geneva artist and cancer patient finds core of support

Decorative painter fighting breast cancer finds supportive community at B. Thomas Golisano Hope Lodge

written by: Chris Swingle  | original article appeared in the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle 3/2/2011

Bernadette Bos was facing breast cancer for the third time in eight years, and she knew six weeks of chemo and radiation treatments would make her tired. So when she still had energy at the start of treatment, she wished aloud that she could keep painting the commissioned murals on canvas that she sells for a living, or even do some fine art for her own sake.

People in Rochester — where she stayed while undergoing treatment — scrambled to make that possible.

Bos, 53, lives with a friend in Geneva, Ontario County, but stayed in Rochester at the B. Thomas Golisano Hope Lodge Hospitality House while getting daily treatment at Wilmot Cancer Center at the University of Rochester Medical Center.

Employees at the lodge, which is run by the American Cancer Society, connected her with local artists who had studio space to lend and encouragement to offer. The support from the artists and people at the lodge, including fellow patients, has been a big plus, Bos says.

Bos tries not to focus on the negative but says life has been hard since she almost died of cerebral malaria about 15 years ago. She was living in Japan at the time and incurred about $80,000 in medical bills.

“All my savings went down the drain,” she says.

The native of Holland lived in many countries — including England, Belgium, Australia and New Zealand — while training horses professionally for show-jumping competitions. She gave up that work after the malaria sapped her energy and since then has been self-employed as a self-taught decorative painter. She has created faux finishes and murals in homes and businesses in the Long Island area, where she lived until moving to Geneva in September.

She was offered a room at Hope Lodge and transportation to her cancer treatment because the two-hour round-trip drive from home each day would have been too costly and tiring.

But the lodge provided much more than housing, Bos says. She appreciated the community of guests. She talked with one patient who agreed that bad things can be a blessing by helping turn life in a new direction. Bos says she was once so busy working and not taking time for herself that it took her first illness to shake things up.

When Bos mentioned her hope to paint while in Rochester, arrangements were made to let her use an empty room at the Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School, where the lodge is housed. Then an American Cancer Society staffer reached out to a local artist she knew who knew of Suzi Zefting-Kuhn’s studio at the Hungerford building, 1115 E. Main St. in downtown Rochester. Zefting-Kuhn shares space with more than a dozen artists, who call themselves Main Street Artists and share the rent.

“We thought if we could help another artist, we’re in,” says Zefting-Kuhn, who does oil, pastel, watercolor and colored pencil work.

Bos, who finished treatment in February, didn’t end up feeling well enough to paint. But she borrowed art magazines from Zefting-Kuhn, joined a studio sketch session with the Main Street Artists and shared some of her work with the group for critique.

Gabriele Lodder of Penfield, a member of Main Street Artists who had breast cancer herself, says art helped her get through it. “I was feeling very sorry for myself and then the oncologist said to me, ‘Maybe you need to focus somewhere else.’” Lodder bought art supplies and immersed herself in her creative outlet.

Bos finds art meditative, just as horse training was. And she tries to avoid dwelling on her diagnosis. “Breast cancer: It’s not me,” she says. “When I die, the core of me, what’s me, is still going to survive.”

She has listened to self-help recordings to pull herself out of feeling in the dumps, and she reminds herself that everyone has problems and that life is a journey.

“Hopefully, in the next life, all I do is paint and paint and paint,” she says.