Penn State alumna Forrest Fortier, 1986 bachelor of science in nursing graduate, has traveled many paths throughout this life, from a nurse educator to flight nurse, from cancer survivor to artist — her current passion. The underlying tenets of her journey include her constant pursuit of creative expression and empathetic caregiving, two things that often coexist for nurses. In fact, Fortier shares her perspective on the intersection of art and nursing best in her own words.

At the onset of Fortier’s career, she knew she loved creative expression but was worried it would not provide the professional satisfaction she needed. So, she pursued nursing instead allowing her to leverage her empathetic side. Attending Penn State University Park for her undergraduate degree in nursing, she began to feel like Happy Valley was her home. A feeling that was recently rekindled when she visited again in August 2021 to attend a ceremony hosted in celebration of the College of Nursing, Fortier’s first academic home, being renamed the Ross and Carol Nese College of Nursing.

After graduating with her bachelor of science in nursing, she put her skills to work as a critical care nurse. Shortly after she became a flight nurse at Duke University in North Carolina, where she met her future husband who is also a nurse. Her career’s progression was periodically paused when she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer. Despite this unsettling diagnosis, she was committed to persevering and successfully overcame her battle with cancer.

Realizing she ultimately wanted to teach, Fortier enrolled in a master’s program and became a nurse educator. Loving her work teaching fellow nurses how to deliver critical care and engaging with families and patients, she decided to take a management position. It was at this point, over a decade into her nursing career, that she began to struggle with endurance and exhaustion. In 2014, Fortier noticed herself significantly slowing down and being unable to do the work that once brought her tremendous fulfillment. She sought medical care to help identify the cause of her extreme fatigue, unfortunately the answers she and her physicians sought would never come.

Over the next few years, she persisted and managed to do her job as best she could. She would work at all hours of the day, in spurts to maintain her energy. Then she began to lose her dexterity, struggling to hold writing utensils well enough to write. In 2019, she retired early leaving behind a career and colleagues who she truly loved.

Struggling to maintain her positive outlook, her mother suggested she reignite her creative passions as a therapeutic outlet. Fortier enrolled in weekly art classes to cope, she tried various mediums, like watercolors. Ultimately, she mastered a collage technique where she combines a variety of papers, ink, and paints to create a textured, interesting result.

Fortier used her collaging technique to create a series of nursing inspired works that all reflect the nursing experience over the course of the pandemic. The series is titled “The Power of Nursing” with collages that reflect that power through learning, prayer, support and, even, despair. Fortier often uses her colleagues and people she knows as models and inspiration, for example, the Power of Nursing through Despair features a colleague and friend of Fortier’s who lost her life to COVID-19.

The Nese College of Nursing commissioned Fortier to produce a series of collages that represent the milestone occasion of becoming the only named nursing college in the Big Ten, in addition to highlighting other unique aspects of the college.

Despite Fortier’s difficulties, she has found a renewed path that allows her to embrace both her passions while helping to illustrate the experience of nursing throughout the coronavirus pandemic for the world.

Learn more about Fortier and her work by visiting her website or her online art gallery.