June 22, 2015 -
I have said that since I was hit by lightning, that I see in gray colors now in my mind.  Shades of gray.  Having gotten to the point of being a colorist just before getting hit by lightning, this has been difficult.  I have been drawing in graphite and in few colors because now, color actually hurts.

I have also realized something else.  After the lightning strike, there have been a couple of times when it appeared as if I had had a stroke.  The first time, about a year after the lightning, left me not being able to speak or form words in my mind.  It was as if my brain had simply stopped working.  I remember walking around the house, trying to say a word, trying to think.  I made it to the neighbor's house and she brought me to the hospital.  Before I was able to do that though, the only word I could get out was "cat".  My cat had passed away before this, and it was actually the first time in 33 years that I was without a pet.  But I said "cat". Meaning, that I came out with a word that had absolutely nothing to do with my situation at that moment.  "Did you have a stroke?" I ask myself, "cat" is the answer.

One of my videos listed on YouTube is about an abstract bead tapestry and working against your own thinking to keep your mind open to color and shapes.  I think that when I got hit by lightning, my perception of color went away to some extent, my language has completely changed (becoming simpler and non-expressive), and yet I am constantly aware of the vast time and thoughts that are part of our collective existence.  By that I mean everything.  I hear differently now, in all ways, and although psychic for most of my life, I am now, in it.  Not just a psychic, because I'm not psychic like I used to be, but I am in it, all the thoughts, all the colors, all of it.  I have been working on pieces called "Through The Tunnel" that describe my ten minutes of near-death experience.  And I am finding that my tunnel doesn't seem to have closed after the lightning event.  This can be overwhelming, but not really, because it's a true state of where I am.  Do I "see" the other side?  I'm not sure.  I do know I hear it all the time.

I drew an ACEO of Saint Michael in gray.  I believe I "see" and "hear" color in gray now.  There is a gray world out there, a brownish world of thoughts, and a black world.  Someone might call them dimensions, or they might be aspects of thinking or perception.  For me, they are separate from each other now.  I used to dream in color.  Now, not only do I not dream during sleep, I don't seem to reach REM sleep at all,  You could almost say I live in a walking, awake dream.

My latest "problem" has been deciding whether to draw my Saint Michael ACEOs in colors such as red, blue, etc., or gray.  I have seen him in gray.  I have seen him in gray.  The Saint Michael.  Because I have a degree in horticulture, and was a botanical illustrator for so long, I have recently been buying plants again, to draw, trying to get back to a "normal" of the past.  I seem to have stored some words or vocabulary in my ACEOS of Saint Michael- my own language maybe, as I sat and stippled his image for hours.  So, drawing ACEOs of him is next to breathing, and may be where my thinking will always be.  That takes care of a subject - and a language - and I am not sure yet why the question of color is still bothering me.  I always tried to work "from life", and as I said, I have seen him in gray.  If I draw his image as an ACEO in color, am I contributing to his existence at all? Adding color to his life or time? or taking away from it?

Being of a very knowledgeable religious background does not mean I believe everything I am told by a church.  I do believe the Bible is true, and Saint Michael is mentioned at least four times in the Old Testament, so yes I believe in Saint Michael.  If my mind is creating a "safe" image and color range because I got hit by lightning, I'm not sure I (it) would have chosen Saint Michael.  He spends his life battling the worst of the worst, and although I also believe he protects us, on some level we have to acknowledge the horror he sees in order to acknowledge him.

So, here I am.  Surrounded by new plants, green and yellow inks, all ready to draw geraniums and sinningias, orchids and trees.  Transcribing the gray colors I see into other colors. In an open tunnel of a near-death existence. Seeing, not only faces of other souls, but Saint Michael, walking in gray.  Did I mention that at least three times I have both purchased and then thrown away Saint Michael items?  Some that were expensive- his mountain as a statue, an Italian statue of him, books of Mont Saint Michel, medals, etc.  I keep trying to stick him back into a small part of my thinking, and the more I do it, over a month or two, there he is again, walking in gray.  And if my language is also tied up into the ACEO image I designed, well, how exactly am I supposed to get away from him?

Gray, as I see him, or in color, as others see him?

Below is what I wrote when I first started working on "Through The Tunnel" (c)

"Through The Tunnel"

In 2009, I was hit by lightning during a thunderstorm while I stood at my kitchen sink doing dishes.  When you know you shouldn't be doing dishes during a thunderstorm, and well, there were only a couple of dishes to do, and the storm wasn't that bad yet......well, the shock threw me to the floor, I couldn't speak but for "Gaaagh, gaagh"..trying to speak, trying to form words.  I felt myself fade to black, only it was grey.  I saw my grandfather and a Native American elder at the end of a long tunnel.

It took me four years to fully address what had happened.  I knew it, could "see" it, but didn't face it.  At the time, the right side of my face was bruised and blue. And, typical for me, I didn't go to the hospital, I went to bed.  And for those four years couldn't quite get why my left side would just stop working, why my arms would cramp up, why my speech would stop, why I have nerve damage to my face.

In 2012, my mother died, very suddenly.  I was lost.  And in order to find myself, I had to back up and face the lightning strike, and the damage to my thinking, to my physical being.  For about a year now, I have not been painting very often.  Until last week, when I saw a doctor who finally started helping me put pieces back together.

We discussed that I hear color instead of seeing it, that I was afraid I had lost my touch with the correct use of color.  But I came home and did a couple of small paintings.  They were in brown.  Without going into all the medical details, I'm a colorist at this point in my life, they should not have been brown.  So, I started a bright whale painting.  And color hurt - it hurts my eyes, hurts my head, just hurts. My color perception has been thrown- whether by the lightning, or by a condition called being a "migraineur".  Prone to constant migraines, only in my case, again perhaps because of the lightning, I don't feel the pain, so my body keeps going, even though it's in a full migraine state.

To heal, I feel I need to first work in brown and then work back into color.  I've been working on this very hard for a few days.  And all I seem to be able to do is draw faces. In my near-death experience, I have remembered the end of the tunnel, perhaps because my grandfather was there.  It occurred to me this morning, what about that whole long length of the tunnel?

What if that was a space of living thought, of faces, people, activity, between life and death.  I can't get to my grief for my mother if these faces are in the way, and I can't fully pull back from that tunnel until I face my mother's death. I lost her and I don't know where she is.  If these faces are keeping me holding onto that tunnel, well, I won't get my own life back. She isn't in my tunnel, I don't think, so hopefully when I again get to the end of the tunnel, past the faces, maybe then color won't hurt. Maybe then I can paint a flower for my mother, or finish the oil of a bench just like the one she enjoyed sitting on.

(note added August 29, 2014- I am finding that working in browns and neutral tones is not helping.  I will continue to do these face drawings, but I feel I also need to push myself to work in a familiar full color range in order to keep my overall color perception accurate.  I am supposed to be focusing on pain so my brain realizes I am in a migraine state.  There was no pain in that tunnel. )

For several months I have been working on depicting my near-death experience, and it is titled "Through The Tunnel" (c). I have been drawing images of Saint Michael, faces in graphite, faces in crayon, my view of my tunnel at the moment I almost died, and pears.

Going through my paintings over the last 30 plus years, pears have been a common subject when I am expressing emotion.

A well-known meteorologist helped me figure out the date of the storm that caused the lightning which had hit me and caused my near-death experience.  And my mother died.

I mention my mother because she died after I got hit by lightning, and although I am well-learned in religious belief and in the aspect of God, I have no feeling whatsoever as to where my mother is.

Right now, I am missing my mother, seeing my own tunnel, seemingly stopped in time on May 16, 2012, the date my mother died, and knowing I have to draw.

My doctor knows that I used to "hear" color instead of seeing it.  I had told him that after I got hit by lightning, color hurts.  It hurts- hurts my eyes, hurts my brain.  I had been a botanical artist, but also a colorist.  I think I now "see" as an artist, or rather in my case, "hear" in black and white or gray.  The tunnel I saw after I got hit was gray.  The lightning hit me on the right side of the head, the creative side of the brain.  My forehead and the right side of my face were damaged, including the major facial nerve on that side.

So, me, a Fine Artist, a Colorist, gets zapped, and wham, everything is gray.  It's been six years since I got hit by lightning. I've tried many ways to heal my sense of color, and I have gone through every medium that I had worked in previously in the past, and have found myself back at pencil, at graphite.