When Silver Darkens: Art, Illness, and Transformation

I used to draw in silverpoint and make large-scale chalk drawings.

There was something sacred about the process—etching a mark into paper with silver, knowing it could never be erased. Silverpoint is unforgiving, permanent. Every line was a choice. A commitment. Like memory etched into the body.

While working from life in chalk, I entered a flow state. There was also a profound communication from the human form - I listened with my body and translated.

But my hands don’t move the same way anymore. Despite surgical intervention, my fingers continue to curl. My hands cramp, and even holding a metal point tool is painful. I used to create large-scale figurative pastels from life—lush, layered drawings that required the full reach of my arms and the precision of touch. Those became too difficult.

Now, I’ve returned to painting. Slowly. Gently.

I work with oil paint on small 18" x 18" copper panels. Copper holds the paint differently—there’s a glow to it. I can only paint for short periods, but I paint. And that feels like resurrection.

The Warrior Gene and the Fire Within

Ankylosing Spondylitis (AS) appeared in young adulthood, alongside the fatigue and pain I tried to push through. I later learned about the HLA-B27 gene, present in most people with AS. It gives some of us a fierce immune system—a warrior that defends the body vigorously but doesn’t know when to stop. A shield that becomes a prison.

My spine isn’t fused, but there are changes:

• Bone spurs

• Cervical vertebrae Hypertrophy

• Enthesitis in most joints — inflammation where tendons and ligaments attach to bone

These changes mean pain in motion, stiffness at rest. My skeleton feels like a map of slow, creeping calcification—but also of adaptation.

Alongside rigidity and pain comes profound fatigue and brain fog. Chronic fatigue in AS is not the ordinary tiredness of a day’s work, but a bone-deep exhaustion – a weight on the soul – as if gravity itself has doubled, burdening not just limbs but the spirit. Such fatigue can represent sorrow or the toll of a long struggle.

I think of my spine now as a sword being forged in fire. Stiff, marked but tempered. There is fire in me—literal inflammation—but that fire has also made me more resolute. My joints may calcify, but my insight has softened.

Silverpoint and the Art of Aging

Silverpoint taught me about transformation before my illness ever did. Those bright silver lines I once drew slowly darken, oxidizing into a warm, brown hue. What begins sharp and bright fades—not into oblivion, but into depth. Into patina. Into richness. My drawings aged like old photographs. My body has aged, too. But it carries its own beauty in the wear.

Dupuytren’s and the Curling Hand

Dupuytren’s Contracture has been a quieter intruder. No sharp pain—just a slow curling inward of the hand.

At first, I feared it meant the end of making. I couldn’t hold tools the way I used to. But I began to realize: maybe the tool was never the point. Maybe what I needed wasn’t a pencil or stylus, but a new kind of touch.

There’s grief in losing what once came easily. But there’s also something sacred in adapting. In drawing from a deeper well. I think of my hand curling not as a loss, but as a form of holding—grief, memory, even a kind of power.

Transformation: What I Create Now

When I couldn’t draw silverpoint anymore, I began to write.

I let the fire speak—not through precision lines, but through story. Through symbol. Through myth. The part of me that used to draw fine, delicate marks now writes in broad strokes, with heartache and honesty.

I’m still an artist. I make marks in different ways: Through writing and painting.

The silver has darkened, yes. But it’s still there.

A New Alchemy

My body has taught me alchemy: how to endure and emerge changed. Not erased.

The fire of illness hasn’t destroyed me—it has refined me. The closing hand, the altered spine, the tired mind: they’re part of the work now. They belong in the image.

This is the story I’m drawing now.

A silver line, darkened with time. Still shining.