Diana de Avila
Sarasota, Florida
“My art came suddenly, like a bolt of lightning.”
Diana De Avila quite suddenly found herself an acquired savant with synesthesia. Shapes and colors began appearing unbidden, often in the middle of the night, compelling her to translate them onto computer screens and her iPad instead of sleeping.
It was as if she instinctively knew which tools to use, how to structure a composition, and how colors should interact. With music playing, she relied on intuition and began to paint.
Acquired Savant Syndrome is extremely rare, and there is no single medical explanation for its onset. In Diana’s case, possible factors include a traumatic brain injury, a relapse of MS, or the high-dose steroids used to treat optic neuritis. Later in life, Diana was also diagnosed as neurodivergent. This diagnosis helped her better understand a lifetime of sensory processing, pattern recognition, and nonlinear thinking, and how these traits inform both her lived experience and her art.
Diana lived a full and varied life before becoming an artist. She enlisted in the Army as a military police officer at 18, and a motorcycle accident resulted in a traumatic brain injury and an abrupt career shift. She later entered religious life as a nun, studied education and psychology, learned to code, and developed ongoing interests in fractal geometry, quantum physics, chaos theory, and augmented reality.
Since the onset of her acquired savantism in 2017, Diana has flourished as an artist. Her work explores galactic, mathematical, and scientific themes, alongside spiritual inquiry and an ongoing study of color and movement. Throughout her work is Diana herself: persistence, curiosity, and a distinctive way of seeing the world shaped by neurodivergence.
“I have learned that I have grit, courage, and curiosity,” Diana says. “I entered a world that would have scared me in normal circumstances. I knew nothing about art. But my circumstances were different, and I learned to work with them and use them for good. I realized that sometimes you have to force your way into something and make your own path.”
