I drew my mother for the first time when I was in art school, and didn’t draw her again until she had her first, then second stroke, and became like a child to me. Nothing prepares you.

When my mother passed, I was lost. I did not know how to survive but I started to paint, madly, and write, always. I pulled the despair out of me and onto paper.

I painted my pain, then angels, and then my mother began to nudge me, telling me it was time to paint her. I looked for her in the wedding photos that were taken when she was just nineteen. I found her in the hours, days and weeks that I spent looking into her face, her eyes.