Alzheimer’s disease accounts for 60-80% of dementia cases. Alzheimer’s is not a normal part of aging. The greatest known risk factor is increasing age, and the majority of people with Alzheimer’s are 65 and older. But Alzheimer’s is not just a disease of old age. Approximately 200,000 Americans under the age of 65 have younger-onset Alzheimer’s disease (also known as early-onset Alzheimer’s).
Alzheimer’s has no current cure, but treatments for symptoms are available and research continues. Although current Alzheimer’s treatments cannot stop Alzheimer’s from progressing, they can temporarily slow the worsening of dementia symptoms and improve the quality of life for those with Alzheimer’s and their caregivers. Today, there is a worldwide effort underway to find better ways to treat the disease, delay its onset, and prevent it from developing.
William Utermohlen was an artist who really focused on drawing still lives and portraits. His works had specific themes that ranged from “Mythological” paintings, the “Cantos” a series of paintings inspired by Dante’s Inferno, the “Mummers” depicting characters from South Philadelphia’s New Year’s Day parade to his “conversation” series of people having conversations.
In 1995 Utermohlen was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and this is his last large painting in which he paints his reaction to his diagnosis. You can see his devastated figure as he grips tightly onto the table. You can see the despair on his face and the loneliness the empty walls provide.
In comparison to the first self-portrait that he did almost 30 years ago in 1967, you can see how much older he is. This is the beginning of his diagnosis with Alzheimer’s and I think that he is already starting to create work that depicts how he’s feeling. You can see that his eyes are staring at us and how there’s a look of despair on his face and he looks like he’s calling for help. He also gave himself an extended skull which I think is an expression of how he feels life is like with Alzheimer’s.
In this next self-portrait a year later, you can see the same look of despair and the feeling of helplessness in which he knows that there is a disease that is slowly making his brain deteriorate. He also really focuses on details around his head and how the self-portrait is only his head and the rest of the body isn’t drawn and that’s due to him wanting to focus on his head and his Alzheimer’s.
He’s only able to create and make out shapes and is barely able to piece them together. You can see him at this point grasping to hang on to his identity and struggle to piece things together. Yet even at this point of his life, he kept drawing.
Utermohlen didn’t die until 2007 but I think that we truly lost him around 2001 once he was unable to continue drawing and doing what he loved. I believe his works have helped in the research of Alzheimer’s as it allows us to study and observe the evolution of the deterioration of the cognitive functions that patients with Alzheimer’s might suffer. It also shows us how he was able to create a sense of self even when he suffered the ability to identify himself fully. He was able to show us the sad reality of Alzheimer’s disease. He shared with us his reality and the pain that came with it.