Welcome to Brain Damage Drawings! I tried for years to draw, taking classes, studying, and practicing all through grade school and even college. The best I could produce was vague cartoonish images. Then in 2008 I experienced a head injury resulting in brain damage which put me in a wheelchair and then a walker for months, with major memory loss, vision problems, and balance issues that continue through the present.

Several years after the head injury my daughter and a family friend were having Saturday Art Night at our house. I wanted to be included in the evening, so I picked up my yellow number two pencil and tried to draw a jumping horse in my journal.

To my great surprise, my drawing looked remarkably like the image from which I was working. I tried again, in case this was a fluke.

Incredibly, the drawing was again somewhat realistic.

From then on the images I created all looked quite realistic! I definitely couldn’t do this prior to the head injury, despite my best efforts and years of trying. Being able to draw like this is one of the very few perks of brain damage, but I’ll take it!

Next I began drawing on the days in which weather prohibited working outdoors at my full time job as a horse trainer and riding instructor. Gradually I improved, and the drawings got larger and larger, even to doing a huge 43 x 31” landscape of the middle east with a shepherd and her flock of sheep which was published in the Exponent II magazine in their winter 2020 issue.

Now I continue to produce monochromatic drawings in graphite and charcoal, as well as having expanded into oil and chalk pastels in color.  I draw for my own enjoyment as well as selling my original pieces nationally. Since relocating to Southern Virginia I’ve entered many art exhibits at galleries in the area. I am now an award winning artist having received recognition for my Body of Work at the Bower Center in the Curry/Bower exhibit in March 2023. I’ve also had the honor of pieces accepted into several juried exhibits at galleries.

I take orders for commissioned portraits of both homes and animals for private collectors. Frequently I am commissioned to create drawings for people to give as gifts or to memorialize a special pet. I’ve donated custom portraits to animal rescues as fundraisers, which have done quite well to raise money particularly for the Retired Racehorse Project. Most recently I’ve been doing pencil and charcoal drawings of homes, and I am taking orders for custom drawings of childhood homes as well as creating drawings for realtors to give as gifts when a property sells.

I’m grateful for whatever the brain damage knocked loose in my head which made it possible for me to create like this, which is why my studio is called Brain Damage Drawings.