Art-making has been a lifelong passion. My love for art has gotten me through dark times and

driven me to reach for significant pursuits. Additionally, my creative drive assisted me in

accepting my disabilities with grace. My primary medium is oil on canvas, which I do with a

headstick that my father created. My style is painterly. I lay my hues close to each other to make

them look fresh and to amuse the viewers by mixing the colors with their eyes.  

  With my art, I create social statements that I feel passionately about. My art provides insights

into topics that people need to consider. When a grade school shooting happened at Sandy Hook,

I painted all of the children and the teachers who passed that awful day. I painted those children

in bright colors to show what the world lost.  

I am working on a body of work about my life and my assistive technology, which allows me to

lead an active life. The main piece is an installation of 144 10x10 canvases of the icons on my

communication device. I did several more pieces about my assistive technology, including my

hand brace and my G-tube pole. 

Another subject that I would like to illustrate is nature and animals. Since I cannot control how

much paint my aide squeezes out, I have excess paint on my palette. Rather than throwing the

old, dry oil paints away and inadvertently putting dangerous materials into the environment, I

create texture pieces. I glue and gesso the dry up paints onto the canvas. Then, paint over the

texture to make the image. Recently, I started to paint landscapes out of texture since I am doing

this to help the environment. The viewers can see my love for animals when they look at an

animal portrait. I get lost in enjoyment while painting the fur of a Jack Russel Terrier or the

feathers of a cockatoo.