Artist Statement: The Weight of the Void
For over fifty years, my hands have known the weight of a brush and the pull of oil across canvas. But no amount of experience prepared me for the silence of June 2025. Epilepsy is a shadow that has followed my family for generations—claiming the health of my sister and two of my three adult children—but in early summer, that shadow became a total eclipse.
My son entered status epilepticus, falling into a month-long, sedated coma. As he lay in the ICU, intubated and drifting at the edge of life, I found myself unable to speak, yet compelled to record the darkness.
I turned to a medium that mirrored the gravity of the moment: a pigment composed of carbon nanotubes, the deepest black known to science. It is a material that does not merely represent darkness; it absorbs light entirely, creating a visual void. In this work, the hearts of a family—distorted by the tremors of a lifelong battle—recede into that vacuum. They fall away from the viewer, shaking and fragile, centering eventually on a single, pristine heart. It is a heart no longer stained the red of earthly suffering, but bathed in the purple hue of the Epilepsy Foundation—a color of peace, solidarity, and sanctuary.
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.”
Against all odds, my son survived. He is recovering, but we are acutely aware that for many families, the void does not release its hold. Framed in smart gold MCM frame with wide white matboard, under glass.
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 of Michigan and Illinois. We must find a way out of the dark.