Sasee Magazine

Cayenne Graves has witnessed the healing power of expressive art. This vivacious and warm volunteer curator of the Mercy Care art gallery creates beautiful paintings depicting images of women and dogs, representing the many emotions that are a part of the human experience. As well as being an artist, this unique individual reaches out to others through her work as a Happiness Coach and seeks to share the joy she finds in living every day. Cayenne’s life has been, and continues to be, led by loving kindness, rather than convention.

A native of New York, Cayenne moved first to California, and then Seattle after college. A vacation to the Virgin Islands changed the course of her life when she met, and fell in love with, an expatriate living in this tropical paradise. Never happy to settle in one place for long, Cayenne soon moved to the islands and married. She and her husband lived an exotic, enthusiastic life, first helping friends build a schooner and then beginning to build their dream home on the blue Caribbean shore. Tragically, Cayenne’s husband died suddenly of a heart attack before the home was barely started. Grief-stricken, Cayenne decided to continue building the home – by herself, piece by piece.

“I spent a couple of months gathering a huge, house-sized pile of building stones before I hired a mason to help me get started,” Cayenne remembers. “Unfortunately, I had chosen the wrong type of stone – the mason told me it would crumble! It set me back a couple of months, but I kept going.”

Determined, Cayenne did finish her beautiful home and filled her life with friends and new experiences. “I wanted to learn massage therapy, but I couldn’t go back to the States to train. So, I brought in teachers and learned the art. I wanted to do something to benefit my community.”

When her friends wanted to fix her up with the new island doctor, Cayenne was not interested. But, a chance meeting led to love at first sight. A divorced ER doctor, Harrison Graves had come to the islands to get away from it all, but the couple soon realized they needed to move back to the States and be closer to his two sons. When a hurricane destroyed Cayenne’s home in 20 minutes, they packed what was left and moved to Raleigh, North Carolina.

Cayenne loved helping raise her two step-sons, Chris and John. “The neighbors would tease me about having no furniture in the house,” Cayenne said, laughing. I wanted the boys to have experiences not things. We did have some furniture, but there were empty rooms that we used as gyms or theaters; it was always morphing and changing. We taught them to go into their heart of hearts to decide if the things they wanted were important. We traveled a lot with the boys, but gave them a lot of free time. I wanted them to know they didn’t have to be busy all the time.”

In 2000, with the boys grown into happy, successful men, Cayenne and Harrison sold everything they owned, bought an RV and hit the road. This huge change even extended to their names – both Harrison and Cayenne are “road names.” “Changing our names told people we were different,” Cayenne explains. Their life on the road was everything they had dreamed of since leaving the Virgin Islands years ago. Harrison devoted himself to his photography, and Cayenne painted. After nine years of the vagabond life, they found themselves in North Myrtle Beach and loved it so much they decided to stay.

After settling in the Cherry Grove area, the couple looked for ways to give back. They trained as volunteers for Mercy Care and were very impressed with Sara-Jo Faucher, the Executive Director, and the quality of care offered by this organization. Both Cayenne and Harrison wanted to help alleviate the fear of death in both the patients and families they served. Cayenne and Harrison approached Sara-Jo about opening an art gallery in the office of Mercy Care and, with her enthusiastic support, it opened last April. Today, the halls of the lovely facility on Devon Court in Myrtle Beach are lined with Harrison’s spectacular nature photography, Cayenne’s paintings and the works of other selected artists. All are meant to bring peace and comfort to the viewer. The artwork is for sale, with a portion of the proceeds going to Mercy Care.

This generous artist also does artwork featuring dogs and donates a portion of the proceeds to animal rescue. “The dogs in my art represent unconditional love.”

In addition to her volunteer work, Cayenne opened “The Listening Space,” where she helps others find the happiness that is “everyone’s natural state.” A self-labeled “Happiness Coach,” Cayenne is quick to say she is not a licensed therapist, but does work with therapists to help teach people to listen to themselves. “I’m a professional listener,” she laughs. “That’s probably why I talk so much when I’m not working!”

Cayenne believes that by guiding her patients to create art projects, and by really listening, she brings them closer to an intuitive state that can lead to healing. “An ‘aha’ moment someone finds for themselves is much more effective than anything I could do or say. I write down everything my clients say…nothing is irrelevant and nothing is an accident.”

Cayenne remembers working with a woman who was labeled catatonic – she would not speak or react to others. Her health care providers had little hope for her recovery. For nine hours Cayenne and this woman made collages and, finally, the floodgates opened. With patience and love, Cayenne discovered that this woman was angry, very angry, and thus began the road to her healing. She also worked with school children in Wake County, North Carolina, when teachers began worrying that the children’s artwork was done mostly in black. “Most of these kindergarteners were not troubled at all. I listened to what they were saying rather than focusing on the colors in their drawings. The conventional rules of art therapy don’t always apply.”

The wanderlust that has been so much a part of Harrison and Cayenne’s life together will never completely diminish. Now they spend nine months here, in North Myrtle Beach, and the other three traveling in their beloved RV. Both Harrison and Cayenne hope to expand their work with Mercy Care, and if funding can be secured, Cayenne hopes to help start an expressive arts program in the coming years that would serve the patients and families coming to grips with end of life issues.

“I deeply honor the creative and intuitive space in everyone. I believe that with loving kindness and the opportunity to express themselves, people will naturally open up and begin to operate from the heart instead of the brain. This can come from art, music, writing or dance. I want to train my clients to find the answers in themselves.”

Contact Cayenne at thelisteningspace@gmail.com.