Artist Statement

For fifty years, I have painted with oils. But in June 2025, when my son fell into a month-long coma due to status epilepticus, color felt insufficient. Epilepsy has been a lifelong battle for my family—afflicting my sister and two of my children—but this was the absolute dark.

While my son lay intubated in the ICU, I turned to the blackest pigment on Earth: a material made of carbon nanotubes that absorbs all light. In this work, the void is literal. Shaking hearts, distorted by the tremors of a lifelong struggle, recede into a vacuum. At the center rests a pristine heart, no longer red with earthly suffering, but shaded in the purple of the Epilepsy Foundation—a color of peace and solidarity.

Hidden from view within the frame, behind the mat board surrounding the painting, my words poured out like tears, pain captured in pencil.

Painted during the first week of July, 2025, as my son lay in a coma due to continuous and uncontrollable grand mal seizures from epilepsy. This is a cruel, cruel disease, like the sword of Damocles ready to strike without warning, sometimes lethally, always horribly. One lives on the edge of oblivion.

My son survived, but many do not. This piece is a plea for the urgent redoubling of research funding. To support a cure, 90% of the artist’s proceeds will be donated equally to the Epilepsy Societies. We must find a way out of the dark.

Art