William Stoehr
Art For Hope - The Faces We Carry
My art draws on seminal Cubist ideas and it reflects my interest in how the brain constructs visual reality.
My mission is to confront substance use disorder (SUD) and the stigma that shadows it by encouraging dialogue, deepening understanding, and inspiring action through art. Stigma is a powerful barrier to prevention, diagnosis, treatment and recovery - it alters how we see ourselves and how we are seen.
My sister died of an opioid overdose. She might still be alive if it were not for prescription opioids and stigma.
My sister OD’d but maybe to the millions affected, I can be part of a solution. I want to use my art to normalize the discussion and to help erase the stigma. Come for the art but stay for the message.
They Have Faces
Substance use disorder never affects just one person. The faces I paint represent a community - parents, partners, children, and friends, as well as clinicians, policymakers, and others who shape our understanding and guide our access to care and recovery.
These faces remind us that we are not alone and that every day we encounter individuals who have been impacted by this issue. I hope to evoke empathy and a deeper understanding of their struggles.
These exhibitions and partnerships are meant to break stigma, confront mental health realities, move the conversation into the community and inspire action before it is too late.
Art For Hope
It is all there - terror, intolerance, guilt, shame and helplessness as well as resolve, forgiveness, love and hope.
People with substance use disorder soon doubt their self-worth and blame themselves. Emma said that she was evil. Oh my - where did that come from? No you are not evil. No you are not alone. Yes we can discuss this. Yes we can get help. Yes there is hope.
Hope to me is the belief that change is possible - that even in the darkest moments, there is a way forward. It is a force that can shift perspectives and result in action. It can emerge when someone sees themselves in a painting and realizes they are not alone - that their feelings are valid and that there is a path from suffering to action to healing.
Hope always comes with arms. It’s you and me. It’s the people around us. It’s the people that hold us. And if these paintings result in a new perspective and action - well then there is hope.
The Physical Exhibit
My work is frequently exhibited in gallery venues but I’ve also successfully shown my work in a variety of unconventional settings such as, temporary pop-up galleries, a vacant storefront on a busy pedestrian mall, an industrial warehouse, hospital/clinics, an airport, government buildings, churches, lobbies, hallways, and a movie theater. I’ve suspended paintings from ceiling rafters, propped them on cinder blocks, hung them 20 feet high on the wall, set them flat on the floor, mounted them on wheeled dollies, projected them on a theater screen, hung them as banners and displayed them on large monitors.
My current exhibit is designed to be flexible. It can scale to suit the space and has been presented in more than 12 different locations to date. The flexibility of my work allows me to collaborate with you to design an exhibition tailored to your space, community and goals.
Examples of some past installations include:
University of Wisconsin–Stout: 230 feet of wall space with 14 seven-foot paintings and 10 digital monitors
University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma: 250 linear feet with 30 paintings
Lowe Gallery, Atlanta: 400+ linear feet with 50 paintings
Foothills Art Center: 200 linear feet with 20 paintings, 12 digital/hybrid paintings on aluminum and video
University of Colorado Denver Fulginiti Pavilion: 120 linear feet with 12 seven-foot paintings and video
Boulder Creative Collective: 200+ linear feet with 30 large paintings, including 16 suspended from the ceiling rafters
University of Michigan: Digital art shown on a full-size theater screen
Denver Space Gallery: 2,500 sq. ft. with 25 paintings and 8 monitors
Pine Street Church, Boulder: 14 seven-foot paintings displayed on movable trolleys
Natl Institute on Drug Abuse: Halls and visitor areas with 20 large paintings and 15 digital hybrid paintings
I can adjust the number of paintings, prints, banners, monitors and projectors to fill a wide range of spaces.
Installation time, depending on the size of the exhibit, is usually two days or less. Here is a sampling of exhibit photos.
About the Art
My art brings together individuals and ideas at the intersection of art, science and medicine. I paint large-scale acrylic on canvas and I also create hybrid-digital paintings. My art is most influenced by the ideas of the seminal Cubists and my interest in the visual brain.
For the early Cubists, painting was not meant to be passively observed but actively experienced. They sought to move beyond depiction - to evoke a greater reality. I am in search of this reality. It drives my hunt for methods and techniques in the service of my mission.
For me, Cubism became a way of perceiving rather than representing the world. They intuited what neuroscience now confirms: vision is constructed by the brain. For more about my methods click here.
Each of my large acrylic paintings begins with a single face and an ambiguous expression. The shared gaze and uncertain context draw viewers in, inviting them to complete the image with their own mental image and then to create the narrative based on their own experience and emotional state.
My digital-hybrid paintings combine traditional painting, digital drawing and photographic manipulation. Each begins with a repurposed image of one of my own unfinished acrylic-on-canvas works. I transfer the image to my iPad, where I continue to draw and build layers of marks and graphic elements. Using photographic tools, I dodge, burn and manipulate elements - creating a new, original work entirely by my hand. These images are displayed on monitors, projected at theater scale or printed on a variety of media.
My art has been exhibited worldwide at universities, art centers, museums, and galleries. Follow this link for a list of exhibitions, awards and more.
These exhibitions and related activities have received considerable national and international media coverage including NPR Morning Edition, NPR Atlanta City Lights, ABC/Scripps and the Associated Press plus many more publications, TV broadcasts, podcasts and interviews. A sample of media coverage can be seen here.
Collaborations
My recent exhibit at Space Gallery - Denver was included in the programing for the College on Problems of Drug Dependence CPDD annual conference and the exhibit featured remarks by the National Institute on Drug Abuse's Deputy Director.
The National Institute on Drug Abuse's Director and I participated in a panel discussion along with professionals from the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus at the opening of my University of Colorado exhibition.
The Foothills Art Center exhibition included a panel with pertinent participants from Kaiser Permanente and a presentation from the Colorado School of Mines on the neuroscience of addiction.
I co-created a public service video with the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
I have been a guest speaker and lecturer addressing my art, methods and science and substance use disorder and stigma at the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), at the University of Wisconsin - Stout, Johns Hopkins University Medical Center, the Washington DC Hospital Association, the Colorado Department of Human Services, the University of Colorado Center for Bioethics and Humanities, Case Western Reserve University, the National Institute on Drug Abuse's Director's Awards Ceremony and the University of Colorado Conference for Interdisciplinary Drug and Alcohol Research.
I presented at the Johns Hopkins Brain Science Institute Science of Arts Symposium. This event focused on the intersection of artistic practice and brain science - exploring how the arts and neuroscience relate to one another and to human perception and cognition. Later I created a three-part series for the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art regarding the brain and art.
Two of my paintings are prominently featured in the opening credits in the two-part documentary Listen to the Silence: Women Trapped In The Opioid Epidemic which aired on ABC and PBS stations nationwide. These were produced by the six-time Emmy Award winning Diva Communications with whom I collaborate.
Using art to erase the stigma surrounding addiction
Nora D. Volkow, M.D.
Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institutes of Health.
Sometimes a portrait can cross boundaries that are impassable in real life. Through art, we can feel things in a new way, gaining perspectives that are different from our own. Art, by connecting us with one another, makes us aware that we are not alone and allows us to experience the suffering and the joy of being alive. In this way it opens the door for empathy and for overcoming the fear and shame that are so commonly encountered when dealing with people suffering from addiction.
The stigma faced by people with substance use disorders in the medical system, society, from their loved ones, and even within themselves poses significant barriers to prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and recovery. Stigma isolates them, exacerbating their condition. Eliminating this stigma is essential as we confront the addiction and overdose crisis in the United States.
The first step toward alleviating stigma is helping people understand that substance use disorders are a medical condition, and not a moral failing.
We must encourage people to talk about the disease. We must learn to see people with substance use disorders as human beings just like us and understand that addiction is a disease like hypertension or cancer – something that needs treatment and compassion.
Science and art are unlikely bedfellows, but the intersection of neuroscience to understand how the brain changes due to substance use and addiction and art to remind us of our shared humanity provides a powerful way to help alleviate deep-rooted stigma and inaccurate perceptions.
I am also an artist, and I’ve always had a passion for the power art has to communicate and change attitudes. While scientific evidence can build a case, the emotional connection experienced through art can be an even stronger argument for changed perspectives.
