I may have had somewhat of a breakthrough since getting hit by lightning.  While getting ready for a doctor's appointment, I noticed the shampoo bottle top is black, not blue as I have thought it was for months.  It's black.  I may have gotten my color" back" since getting hit by lightning.

When I got hit by lightning, my color perception had gone to gray, and because I had been a colorist, this was a real problem.  Using color hurt my head, hurt my thinking, hurt my eyes.

I have been drawing in brown, until yesterday when I unpacked some paints.  I had tried, maybe a year or so ago, to "push" my perception back, even by starting a go-fund-me page to purchase the best oil pastels for their color range.  It hadn't worked, because color still hurt.

If my shampoo bottle is black, if this morning, I finally saw it the way it is and not as a deep blue, then something may have kicked back in. !!!

Last week my doctor wanted to check my lungs for damage from the lightning strike, 6 years after it happened.  I don't want to lose one thing to gain another, but as an artist who strongly followed Vincent Van Gogh's style, having my color back would be something special.

Look for some oil pastel work in the next few days......

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?

Can we live without color?  A few years ago I wrote a page for my website about how artists in a bad economy should not forget about graphite and pencils.  My high school teacher taught me a simple life-long lesson- if you can't draw it, you won't be able to paint it.

When I got hit by lightning, I lost my color perception.  One appointment with my doctor was especially both rewarding and heartbreaking.  After hearing about my painting and thinking, he said "You are like Vincent.." and he was about to finish "Van Gogh", but as soon as I heard "Vincent", my heart was beating double-time.  Vincent van Gogh has always been my favorite artist, since high school at least, if not earlier.  He could paint orange and green and make you see a rainbow. (Do not mention Thomas Kinkade to me, may he rest in peace).

For at least 20 years I headed down a path similar to Vincent van Gogh's, although I didn't plan it.  My doctor is the one who confirmed I hear color instead of seeing it, and he said that a use of a slight dissociative disorder that I have enabled me to put the colors aside as I heard them and painted.  Joy at having a professional "brain and thinking" doctor tell me something I guess I knew all along.  I understood Vincent van Gogh truly, whereas it took me about 20 years to understand and appreciate Picasso.  I think Picasso was painting math, while Vincent was singing the world.

The heartbreak in that doctor's appointment was that we were determining that I had actually lost my perception of color since getting hit by lightning.  I left that appointment thinking I would work in different color media until I got my color back.  That was at least a year and a half ago.  I can work in color, and I know how I did it before - BUT - I now hear color in gray.  When I would start an oil painting, whether abstract or traditional, my use of color was a satisfying pattern.  It was like baking a cake- I could do it in my sleep.  Did I mention I don't sleep now? lol- I don't reach REM sleep anymore since the lightning either. I dream while I am awake, my brain shuts down every once in a while, but it isn't when I am trying to sleep.  They are calling this epilepsy.

I have spent the last week going through some of my paintings, in oil, oil pastel, pen and ink of course, gouache.  I think I have found that I hear in gray and then if I were to use color now, I am transcribing the grays into colors. Steel Gray.  My world is steel gray.

As I work on depicting the near-death experience of the lightning strike, I had found already that the "tunnel" I saw when the event happened was gray.  It wasn't white like some other people have described, mine is gray.  I say "is" because I think that we each have a tunnel- a way to heaven when we die.  I believe I saw mine when I got hit by lightning, that I held onto having my son and staying here, I lost the ability to speak, and lost my previous perception of color before I saw the tunnel, when the lightning hit the right side of my head..

And now, my page on graphite is calling to me.  It isn't a bad economy that has me leaning toward simple materials and gray scales, it is being struck by lightning.  Where does a colorist who thinks like Vincent van Gogh turn when the world turns gray?  Metalpoint, and a literal use of gray.  Steel gray metal on gouache or marbledust, rabbitskin glue and wood.  I don't want to transcribe my world, I want to draw it directly.  I always have preferred to work "from life" instead of models, and trying to assign colors to a gray scale is not how I want to work.

The above photo is how I hear color now.  The same photo below, in color, is a noisy conglomerate of mush to me, someone else's painting.

I did a couple of things using a steel stylus yesterday- steel gray in the literal use is a very light-colored material.  Much lighter than copperpoint or even goldpoint.  I'm worried that if I work in steel only, I will always be trying to add the contrasting darks instead of allowing the light to be enough.  We will see...

If you are interested in working with metalpoint, you can see my pages here.