Art and MS

I need help as this is my pitch.

I’m Tommy B. McDonell and this cute little icon is my Artist Logo for Leap4ArtNYC. You see, I took my first art class in the city, before I moved to NC.

I’m 73 and a mixed media artist. A former educator and more, I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in 1995. My MS then was mostly just tingling and a some balance problems. I didn’t pay much attention to it.

I believe that I wouldn’t be an artist, had I not been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in 1995. From 1995 until 2006, I had worked in education and real estate. A friend and I co-founded a non profit English program which we named Learning English Adult Program, or LEAP. I taught writing and I sold real estate.

I took shots for my MS but I really didn’t pay any attention to my health.

Art & watercolors intrigued me

In 2007 On our way home one day I saw a sign at Utrecht art store near East 12th street “Watercolor Lessons, No Drawing Needed”. I knew I couldn’t draw but I had always wanted to play with watercolor. I signed up.

That winter I took watercolor classes, taught graduate students how to write and how to teach writing at NYU, and worked in real estate.

Watercolors, I realized aren’t easy. It took me a whole weekend to paint one petal. I continued the class and then I moved from NYC to NC. And I continued to take art classes in watercolor and then in alcohol inks.

My multiple sclerosis & life was changing

My MS during this time, however, began to change and my life and who I was or who I thought I was changed also. My second husband died two years after we had moved to NC. (My first husband had died six years prior to this).

I began to watch my life change, not only as a widow, but trying to decide what I was doing with my life.

I did however keep painting. And during this time, I won awards for my art, and I joined or was accepted in online art groups. I began to write about my MS and my painting.

I began to realize that these two parts of my life, a disease that no one understood, and my art which drifted towards abstract art, had become one. I chose at that time to write about my MS and my art on my website, on Facebook and Instagram. And I have continued to do this ever since.