Dear Jeanne, [Jeanne Wesselius van der Veer, 1931-
I think you may be back in the hospital, so for your amusement I gathered some more drawings for you. The drawings
that I sent you in my last letter were 23cm x 30cm, I had lots of time to do them because I was alone in a room for a
month in the hospital, and later 6 weeks in a rehabilitation hospital and not feeling too badly, just very weak. But I have
also been doing small drawings in sketchbooks, about 14cm x 10cm, for years, whenever I had an appointment at the
hospital [2003-
a couple of years ago, and started to draw every weekday from a TV news programme, but I miss drawing the whole body …
just heads and shoulders in the TV interviews!
The left and right drawings were done in 2003 when SARS was in Toronto, and everybody had to wear masks. It was very
very strange to see all of these masked people in the hospital. The middle drawing has my weight 66.8kg, and I converted
it into pounds.
Before my transplant I had a lot of transfusions to keep me going, and after the transplant I had treatments in the
transfusion room to boost my immune system. So, a lot of “models” just lying around….it was great! 106/67 good blood pressure,
maybe a little low..
More transfusion drawings, some sitting up, a woman lying down. You can see that my blood pressure that day
was 146/83…a little high. I also see that I needed a “bolus” (saline water) because I was dehydrated..
I also started to draw people standing, people waiting in line )I think they too are wearing masks). I was especially conscious of
shoes, at one time I just drew people’s shoes. So, you see some good high-
I will end this letter with a little report on our garden. Today I looked out the back window and saw no tulips. Gerrard
said he cut them down, they shouldn’t go to seed. We have bleeding hearts (coming through our neighbour’s fence),
lilac (leaning into our garden from the neighbour), some forget-
The perennials still to come are flox, nasturtians, clover, dark blue spider wort. Gerrard planted some annuals: snap dragons
and he sowed some wildflower seeds, and I think he plans to plant some marigolds, since they keep some pests away from
tomato plants. Today he also planted tomato plants, they started their lives as seedlings upstairs. All the rain is helping the
garden, which was very ve
ry dry.
Dear Jeanne, I hope you have stays at home where you can enjoy the garden, the music, the cat, your friends, the art.
Gerrard sends his very good wishes. love Alex
Did I tell you l liked to draw chairs?
click picture to view Jeanne’s drawings of me
