I began painting with gouache in the first stillness of 2020, when the world closed and time loosened. Cat and I were home for six sequestered weeks.

Even when work resumed, I kept painting. In the margins. In the evenings. In the quiet spaces that felt increasingly necessary.

By April 2021 my body had begun to speak differently. Balance faltered. Walking difficulties. Cognitive issues. Fatigue settled in the bones. My left side moved as if through water. Multiple sclerosis (MS) — a slow unthreading.

Gouache asked for steadiness. For control at the edge of a brush. For a hand that could hover without shaking. I no longer had that hand. 

So I turned to the screen. Digital light. Undo buttons. Clean edges. It kept me working. It kept me making. But it did not push back. There was no drag. No resistance. No weight gathering at the end of an arm. No accident thick enough to matter. The surface felt sealed. Too obedient. Too quiet.

And then — acrylic. Heavier. Unapologetic. Physical. It did not demand delicacy. It welcomed force. It absorbed imbalance. It could hold the tremor without denying it.

I scraped. I layered. I buried and uncovered. Paint moved like weather across the surface. The work stopped trying to be controlled and began trying to be honest.

In acrylic, I stopped reaching for what had been lost. I worked with what remained. The body changed. The hand changed. The work changed. And somewhere in that thickness --in that friction-I found satisfaction. Not ease. Not mastery. But recognition

My journey, my art