FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 17, 2002

Resident artist Yvonne Smith pours color and life into the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation's (HHC) holiday greeting card for 2002. Her work entitled 'A Peaceful Country Brook' was the illustration selected for this year's card. The painting depicts a quiet winter scene filled with snow-covered evergreen trees and a graceful bridge across a meandering stream.

"My love of figures and my unlimited palette helps pour life and color into my paintings," said Ms. Smith. "Some of my paintings are recreations of something I have seen while others are completely from imagination," adds the Washington, D.C. native.

An award winning artist, Smith is a resident at the Coler-Goldwater Specialty Hospital & Nursing Facility on Roosevelt Island, where she has developed her own technique using acrylics. She received her first art training in mechanical drawing in junior high school.

Coler-Goldwater offers one of several art therapy programs at HHC facilities. Yvonne Smith continues her training through the art studio program offered at the Goldwater campus under the direction of Recreation Therapist Lizette Jaffri. "With the guidance and support that I've received from dedicated therapists in the department of Therapeutic Recreation Services at the hospital, I became a better artist."

Ms. Smith's holiday creation will be included in a larger the collection of work from HHC resident artists whose art will be shown at the Therapeutic Recreation's Annual Art Show in 2003.

HHC is currently exploring the possibility of publishing reproductions of Ms. Smith's paintings and artwork contributed by other artists who participate in the art programs at several HHC facilities. Proceeds from the sale of notecards, greeting cards and calendars featuring the artwork, will go to The HHC Foundation, a nonprofit foundation which raises funds for community health outreach and education.