2012 MSAA Art Showcase Entrants

View this month’s Artist of the Month

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Lois Flanigan – Aberdeen, SD

Art enriches our lives and our perspectives on life. Art has given me a new world, some good, some bad. It helped me accept my life as it is now, and to accept my MS. It takes a lot of discipline, and concentration to pull a point of graphite across a piece of vellum and create a rendition of something seen or imagined.

I set aside an hour each day for my art. That is just for me. Problems of the word do not encroach upon mine. No demanding physical therapy regimes. No MS stealing from my life. It provides me a time of stress relief and quite self-expression.

Art has also given me a critical eye with which to view the world. I see things I had never before. Nature’s wonder as ruffled edges unfold into the beauty of a rose. Crystal pools of blue smile at me with love each day from behind my husband’s corrective eye-ware. And unconditional love shows within the eyes of my pets.

Unfortunately, I also see fear in the eyes of someone newly diagnosed with MS. I see disbelief in the eyes of the person I’ve just told I have MS. But, worse, I see disrespect and self-riotousness in the eyes of those who brush past someone in a wheelchair as it they did not exist. Art makes our world bearable.

 

Swan


Old Friend


Spirit of America