I am an artist, born and raised.
I started drawing at 5 years old, and throughout my life, creating art has been my only constant. When I’m in the studio, I feel like I’m embodying what it means to be a human living in God’s grace. Some days are slow and relaxed, others energized, and sometimes even frustrating, but regardless, I always leave feeling satisfied and whole. If nothing else, isn’t that what life should embody?
In recent years, I’ve undergone a metamorphosis, healing from childhood trauma, experiencing unforeseen heartbreak, and living a life I never imagined I’d live. I moved back to Canada in 2018 after living in NYC for 7 years. I had spent the better part of 20 years developing my career as an artist and was making great strides to accomplish my goal of being a professional. My CV page will exemplify this.
Admittedly, I was ignorant about how difficult it was going to be to be a professional artist in Canada. I wasn’t expecting the process to be as different as it was in the USA, and I thought that my accolades and resume would open all the doors. I was wrong. By 2020, my once upward-trajectory career was taking a deep dive into the depths of destruction, and I decided I wanted to move back to the US when the pandemic hit, and we were quarantined. It was a stressful and chaotic time, but also a phenomenal opportunity for me to focus on rebuilding my portfolio and my brand. As a professional artist, I had to be ready to ship, and I was initially grateful for the forced quarantine. About 3 months in, I had finished two new self-portraits, a few drawings and was working on celebrity portrait commissions, as well as teaching a drawing course online, when life threw another curveball.
My mom became very ill and required several hospitalizations during the pandemic (unrelated to COVID). She has had osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis for years and was seeking progressive treatment for that, but what brought her to the emergency room on that fateful afternoon was an abscess that had grown to the size of a baseball in her bowel and had started leaking toxins into her body, causing septic shock. This was the second time my mom almost died. The first time was when she gave birth to my baby brother, who was stillborn due to the umbilical cord being wrapped around his neck; she bled out and was technically dead for a few minutes before the medical staff revived her. Forty-three years later, she lay in the emergency room on death’s door once again.
The doctors found the abscess and began treatment. She was kept in the hospital for one week as they ran tests and treated and stabilized her. When she was released into a regular care unit, I was able to visit her every day, and for a week, I observed as they treated her. The yellow tinge of that hospital room permanently etched shadows of a nightmare on my mind’s eye. She was released by the week’s end and sent home with an IV antibiotic that a nurse came to administer once a day for weeks. I became her primary caregiver, and because of this, I remained in Canada to take care of her.
Caring for my mom required the same kind of attention and consideration I give to my work. Consisting of sponge baths, diaper changes, helping her to and from the bathroom (there are few things as humbling or surreal as cleaning your parent after a trip to the toilette), feeding her and monitoring her sleep. She slept a lot those first few weeks, I did not. I was so anxious about her condition and the state of the world that I focused obsessively on the rise and fall of her chest as she breathed, checking throughout the night as insomnia kept me alert to every change in her condition.
After some time passed, she gained a little more strength and was able to get in and out of bed on her own. I purchased an electric bed to help make the process easier. She had expressed the desire to get one before any of this happened because of her arthritis, and I thought this would also help with her recovery from the abscess. When her mental faculties returned, and she was able to stay awake during the day and the nurses’ visits were consistent, I felt safe to take a day off.
Believing that she was on the mend and knowing that my brother was in town should anything happen (I didn’t think anything was going to happen) I decided to take a day trip to a small town in Quebec, trusting that the composition that was designed - the medication schedule, the nurse visits, my mother's improving strength – was solid. It was on my drive home that I received a phone call from my brother saying that our mom was back in the emergency room. She had called him that afternoon and asked him to come over sometime after the nurse administered her antibiotic. She told my brother that she wasn’t feeling well (an oversimplification). When he arrived at her house, she was in her bed and was in and out of consciousness. She told him that she didn’t know what was happening but that she didn’t feel well. According to my brother, she was as pale as a ghost and could barely talk or move. He knew this was more than just fatigue and took her back to the emergency department. On the phone, driving back to Cornwall, hands free, I asked him how she was doing, and he said he didn’t know. They wouldn’t let him in due to the regulations, and he was waiting for a phone call for an update.
I made it back home in less than an hour and a half, driving like a maniac on the highway. I was in Quebec for most of the ride, and Quebecers are known for driving like maniacs, so I felt relatively safe that I wouldn’t get pulled over. I made it to the hospital in record time. I remember parking in the hospital parking lot and fast walking into the emergency check-in. The entrance was blocked by staff due to COVID regulations. I was ready for a fight and was going to barroom brawl the nurses if they didn’t let me in. I knew what dire straits my mom was in, and there wasn’t a single human who was going to keep me from seeing her. To my surprise, the staff let me see her without issue because after she was checked in, they saw her condition and didn’t know if she was going to survive this one. The antibiotic had leaked into her body, causing sepsis again. She had a temperature of 106. This was the third time my mom almost died. Even more humbling than whipping your parents’ ass is witnessing them near death in a delusional state. Although she was very calm, she didn’t know where she was or what was happening; the fever and toxins were affecting her brain.
The medical staff were doing everything they could to stabilize her and keep her conscious as I sat by her bedside holding her hand. Anxiety heightens my attention to detail and focus, and I studied her like one of my subjects. The flesh on her hand was translucent, her blueish green veins and age spots popped against her whiteness like that first mark on a Gessoed canvas. Her skin was always so soft. The texture of her skin triggered a flood of memories. After my parents got divorced, I started experiencing a lot of anxiety, and whenever I had an anxiety attack, my mom would hold me and rock me. My little body curled up in her lap, her chest cradling my head as we rocked the anxiety away to the hum of her made-up songs. She was always humming something, and I would fall asleep on her chest, my thumb in my mouth, my other hand playing with her earlobe. The skin on her earlobe was exceptionally soft and always a little cold. I’d rub my thumbnail across it, and for whatever reason, that soothed me.
The doctors in the ER that day were able to stabilize her. They replaced her IV with a stint to ensure this wouldn’t happen again, and she was cleared to come back home the next day. The antibiotic healed the abscess but left a slew of other side effects in its wake and significantly compromised her immune system. Since then, her autoimmune diseases have progressed with a vengeance, and new ones have emerged. Stairs have become an impossible feat; she relies on a walker to get around in her apartment. She can’t carry large, awkward or heavy items, like soda or toilet paper, and so I run most of her errands for her. She needs a wheelchair for any longer outings, like groceries or going out for lunch or to a movie. She can only muster one or two outings a week because the entire process is so time-consuming, given how slowly she moves and how much pain she’s in daily.
There’s a local outdoor trail with a rubber path about 20 minutes from our house. It was designed for runners and wheelchairs, but I see it as a work of art. The path winds through evergreens, their shadows dappling the surface with specks of light that look like lace strewn across the rubber. This is one of my mom’s favourite places. While my eyes observe the light and shadows bouncing with the wind, she breathes in the pine-scented air and feels most connected to God in nature. Due to her mobility issues and the lack of accessibility in community parks and trails, she’s unable to do it on her own. Finding this park was a godsend. We make a few loops, weather permitting. It’s beautiful watching her gain so much pleasure from something that us upwardly mobile people might take for granted. Through her eyes, I'm learning to see beauty in slower, smaller moments - a lesson that's reshaping both my art and my understanding of grace.
Her mobility is so challenged that she can barely bend her knees, and stepping over the bathtub to shower is too difficult. She’s able to sponge bathe daily, and I wash her hair in the kitchen sink every few days. I blow it dry, put curlers in, and time it to be clean and quaffed before one of our outings, so that she feels pretty and put together. She has an electronic bed and chair that help her orchestrate her movements. Even lifting her from seats – wheelchair to a movie theatre recliner, or her favourite restaurant booth – has been a learning curve. Through it all runs the constant thread of her pain, visible in the changes of expression I've learned to read like colours on a palette. The Tylenol, gummies and the occasional cortisol shots offer temporary relief, but the effectiveness diminishes over time and doesn’t provide the same kind of pain relief that they once did. She’s allergic to the other typical treatments used to slow the progress of arthritis and, for better or worse, hasn’t been able to take them. I sit in on all her medical appointments (when we are blessed to get one, because the medical system is so backed up it often takes months to see a specialist, let alone get treatment). I sit in on them because her anxiety is so high for these appointments that she often doesn’t register everything that the doctor is saying and forgets to mention certain things about her conditions. There have been other side effects from the antibiotics, but they are much too personal and sensitive for me to discuss on her behalf.
Although my mom is stable, she still requires a caretaker to help with daily chores like laundry, cooking, cleaning, running errands and anything that requires mobility, which is where I’ve come in over the last 5 years. This year, we found an organization that can occasionally run errands for her, which has freed up more time for me to focus on rebuilding my career.
I never signed up to be a caretaker and was not prepared for this role. This life was nowhere near anything I ever imagined for myself. When my mom first got sick, people suggested senior care homes, but as far as I was concerned, that wasn’t an option. My mom raised me, shaped me, sometimes still does, and as long as I am able, I will take care of her to the best of my ability so that family can surround her for as long as she is able. This is not noble. This, very simply, is just what you do. I am not looking for a pat on the back. I don’t need anyone to think that I’m such a wonderful daughter. I’m not. My mother and I have wrestled with deep wounds that left stains only solvents could clean. Before she became dependent, I had no idea what it meant to place someone else’s life ahead of mine, to sacrifice parts of myself to make another human comfortable and safe. I was selfish. Not in a narcissistic way, I lived in the self-absorbed intensity familiar to any artist. I focused on my dreams, my desires, and what I wanted to achieve, but I had no idea how to share that frame or what it meant to change or alter my composition because of someone else’s needs. Now I’m learning how to work with patience, sacrifice and tenderness. They are changing how I see everything, my art, my mother, my life.
5 years later, I am starting to understand what this lifestyle entails, and only now am I accepting my new life with Grace. Learning how to care for my mom was a challenge I wasn’t expecting, and because of this, it has monopolized my time. As a result, I haven’t had the time or energy to create in the manner I used to, and yet the pieces I have created are some of my best works. I don’t know many people in my situation, and I have no idea what the learning curve is, but I sometimes feel ashamed that it’s taken me this long to adjust. There has been no shortage of hardship, and the stress of it all has been substantial. Yet, I am grateful. I am grateful for the time I’ve spent with my mom, healing from our wounds, building a healthier, stronger relationship and finding our love and friendship for each other again. Our routine has stabilized, which means I’ve had the time to find my passion again. Not just passion for my work, but passion for life, for food, for health and wellness, for God, and for friends and community. Ironically, what I initially thought of as the death of my life is turning out to be a rebirth of something greater, something more fulfilling, and I have started dreaming of a new future again, that includes my mom and our life together for as long as God will grace me with her presence.
It's certainly not all sunshine and lollipops, we still have our fair amount of exhausted, frustrated, angry, depressed, anxiety ridden days, but I am now able to meet them with understanding and compassion, which enables me to find solutions when I need to, build boundaries with a solid foundation and most of all, appreciate the gift that I’ve been given to care for my mom in her biggest time of need. I am also grateful for being forced to face myself and take responsibility for how I’ve failed to show up in my own life. I’ve had to face things within myself that I might not have faced otherwise, and because of this, I believe that I am stronger and more grounded than I’ve ever been.
I’m on a new path, travelling in a new direction that is exciting and terrifying. Never in a million years did I think that I’d be 3 years shy of 50 and starting from scratch again. The hours I spend caretaking mean I can’t produce artwork like I used to. Which means that rebuilding my career is taking longer than I’d like, but I’m ok with that now because the pieces I do create are rich and profound. Because my life is mostly slow and quiet these days, my studio practice has become more deliberate. I have more patience and compassion than ever before and am learning, one day at a time, perhaps for the first time, how the patience I’ve developed in caregiving seeps into my art and my soul. I’m no longer afraid of slow progress or microcosmic changes.
Through these years of caring for my mom, my understanding of creation has fundamentally shifted. I see strength in the tremor of her hand reaching for a teacup, beauty in her determined brow as she navigates her walker through doorways. Time moves differently now - not in exhibition deadlines or opening nights, but in small victories and quiet moments of grace. My art has always been about seeing deeply, about capturing the essence of things. Now, watching my mother find joy in a rubber path through the woods or the scent of pine needles or a clean head of hair, I understand that the most profound art isn't always hung on gallery walls. Sometimes it's found in the raw courage of living, in the careful choreography of care, in the daily practice of love. This wasn't the path I expected, but it is the path that I needed - both as an artist and as a daughter.