Color Away Your Stress and Anxiety

Every night at about 9 p.m., Joe Harrington sat at a small side table in his hotel room, cracked open a coloring book and eased his worries by coloring bright shades of yellow, orange and blue using pencils and gel pens. 

Harrington, who was in Durham last December to visit a friend for several days at Duke University Hospital, picked up the coloring book at the hospital from Arts & Health at Duke. The book was Harrington’s stress reliever while his friend had open-heart surgery. 

“I get a lot of pleasure out of coloring,” said Harrington, director of religious education at Saint Francis Xavier Chapel at Camp Lejeune and resident of Jacksonville, N.C. “When you’re sitting down and trying to create something, it takes your mind off everything else.”

The 16-page coloring book is among the free art kits that patients and their friends and family can request when they visit Duke University Hospital and Duke Medicine Pavilion. In addition to coloring books, patients can request art kits for journaling, origami, watercolor and more.

“For patients and families, these coloring books are not something that’s part of their medical treatment,” said Bill Gregory, visual artist in residence for Arts & Health. “It’s is something to make them smile. An opportunity to step away from the reason they’re in the hospital.”

Since January, about 300 art kits have been delivered to people in Duke University Hospital and Duke Medicine Pavilion by Arts & Health at Duke. So far, Arts & Health has released two coloring books, each containing 16 images. 

The first book, designed by a freelance artist, came out in 2013 and features renditions of the Duke University Hospital art collection. The second book, published this year, contains drawings of birds, turtles and flowers that can be found throughout Duke grounds. 

The latest coloring book was the work of Gregory, the visual artist in residence for Arts & Health. He spent about a year designing the book. 

Gregory started by taking photos from around Duke Gardens, Duke Forest and Duke South. He then printed the photos and used a powder called red iron oxide to transfer the images onto a linoleum block. He then highlighted the outlines of each image with a Sharpie and cut away everything but the lines using a sharp chisel with a concaved blade. The raised surfaces were then rolled in ink and printed in the Durham studio of Bill Fick, Duke lecturing fellow of Art, Art History & Visual Studies. 

Once the coloring book was released in January, Gregory was overcome with a sense of accomplishment. He has colored his way through the book using crayons and colored pencils. 

“Creating this coloring book was an opportunity for me to give back to the hospital,” Gregory said.

Harrington who colored in the book while visiting his friend, ended up returning his book to Arts & Health after he completed coloring as a thank you. 

“It really helped me relax during my visit,” Harrington said. “Coloring is healing in its own way. It takes your mind off pain and stress.”