In 2019, after a rapid decline in my health, I was diagnosed with a connective tissue disorder, Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. With multi-system illnesses and spine injuries affecting my hand function, my usual way of painting became untenable; I taped paper to the floor and used my feet as paint brushes. Suddenly, I was a nomad in my own life.

While working on this collection, in 2024, I was hit by a car as a pedestrian which left me with craniocervical instability and a traumatic brain injury. Now living with a fraction of the cognitive battery I had before and intractable migraine, I spend much of my day resting my injured brain in a dark, quiet room. Through painting and writing, I resurrect what is left of me, grieve what is lost, and let my work and the memories loved ones have of me reshape me into something that can be made legible again. My life, however tragically it sometimes unfolds, continues to become more and more precious; a limitless body would not be a gift. 

Making marks with a body in pain and in neurological decline while listening to music becomes a dance between what is injured and what is free; it is a practice of reintegrating a fragmented mind and body. While my body deteriorates in real time, the hopes my past-self had for my future evaporate. Over time the question “how do I get well?” changed to “how do I live with pain and illness as companions?” 

If These Feet Could Fly is a collection of paintings made with my feet exploring answers to these questions: What happens when the body deteriorates in new and unexpected ways before the heart is ready? How do you learn to love the thing that you most wished hadn’t happened? How do you live a meaningful life when wounded beyond repair? And how do you grieve who you used to be and learn to love a new version of yourself?

My body is decomposing quicker than I can write down the recipe to reverse. Please don’t ever let me stop falling in love: with people, places, the mundane and ordinary, and what’s left of my broken body and shattered heart and all the ways these pieces can still be reorganized into a mosaic of a life well lived. 

With paint on my feet, I document it permanently.

Prints are produced on demand on stretched canvas, acrylic plexi, or giclee fine art paper in a variety of sizes here in the United States.

Contact ArtLifting for larger size options.