“I’m very creative, put it that way,” says Maria. “You can give me a rag, I’ll make a wedding dress out of it. It’s in my blood.”

Maria is an artist, with several family members who are creative. She hasn’t been doing art all her life, however. Earlier, she had been a nurse for over 20 years.

Finding Art

“I did scary monsters on my high school wall,” Maria recalls. “That was the last thing I did, and I never picked up anything after that. Then when I got sick, the committee at Lethbridge was trying to find things for me to do, and they got me into an art class. I had never even painted. I used oil pastels, dry pastels, and pencil, but the art class was paint… It was fun. I had not painted in 25-30 years.”

She took to it, and her teacher was impressed with her talent. This was five years ago. She has been painting ever since.

Maria has Stargardt disease, which affects her central vision, as well as multiple sclerosis.

“When I see direct, I don’t see,” she explains. “My peripheral vision then compensates for what I see.”

Due to her fine motor skills, she can’t hold on to paintbrushes. She mainly uses sponges and her fingers.

Painting is not all Maria does. She also sculpts. For a couple of years, she also taught jewelry-making to help people with disabilities at a community centre.

“The only one who really understands my sight — or my lack of sight — is my ophthalmologist. So when he sees what I can do, he doesn’t understand how I can do it,” she says about her art.

Finding Neil Squire

Maria heard about Neil Squire through Independent Living Montreal. She got an iPad for her birthday and started lessons with Harvey, a summer student with the Distance Computer Comfort program.

“All the things that you all do so easily was a challenge for me, and that goes back to my disabilities. [Even a] little thing for me is three times harder than for everybody else. I didn’t know anything — nothing — but to check my emails and go on the web.

“So I started working with Harvey, and it was really good.”

In the classes, Maria learned how to navigate the iPad while magnifying the items on her screen. She became familiar with copying and pasting files. As for her art, she learned how to manage photos of her art, create videos out of her photos, and put them on Facebook to share with others.

“I learned a lot with Harvey,” she says. “He was really really good and very very patient with me… I do thank Neil Squire a lot.”

What’s Next

What’s next for Maria? She is currently attending an art class and also working on a series of paintings about loneliness.

“When you look at landscapes, if you look at anywhere in the world, even if you go to the country, there’s a sense of peacefulness. Harmony. Loneliness. That kind of comforts the person who is lonely. I just started the series in June and it’s the last project in my art class. This is my subject now. So everything I paint is connected to loneliness in some way,” she explains.

“So that’s my art thing. It’s pretty much part of my life. I encourage everybody to find something, because it’s good for the soul.”