This drawing was published in the Winter issue of The Exponent II magazine at the beginning of 2020. Here is my artist statement:

Christ’s arrival is special to me because of the healing it offers. As a child and young adult, I tried for many years to draw by taking classes and courses and never producing anything more than cartoonish images. In 2008 I suffered a traumatic brain injury which put me in a wheelchair for months, and drastically affected my vision and balance. Many years later my foster daughter was drawing in the evenings and I decided to join her. I discovered that since the head injury I could draw, and create realistic images. This ability is one of the gifts that came from brain damage, and is why I call my pieces Brain Damage Drawings.

I approach scriptures as stories, because I believe stories are a phenomenal medium for conveying feelings and information. When I read scriptures I look at each character and imagine which one I’d be if I were in the story. In the nativity, I would be one of the shepherds because as a professional horse trainer in Colorado, I likely would have been out in a field taking care of animals when I heard of Christ’s birth. Even though most shepherds at the time were male, as a feminist and Christian I still picture myself, a female, out in the mountains tending to my animals when love, healing, and forgiveness came to earth.