This Happened, and It Mattered
Drawing the moments we don't want to lose
Last Wednesday I used a spray fixative for the first time. Maybe the fumes were getting to me, but I started thinking about the life of these graphite portraits I’ve been making—where they go after I deliver them, and who besides me and the recipient will ever see them.
Most of them, I imagine, will be kept privately. Maybe even stored. A bedroom wall, a closet, somewhere out of public view.
That brought back a memory from my first six months of recovery.
In treatment, the art therapist suggested we draw our disease. As you might expect, most people opted out—still detoxing, or ashamed, or numb. “I don’t have an artistic bone in my body.” said a voice from the group.
The last thing I had drawn before that was one of several self-portraits I made in high school.
But I found a selfie I had taken in the ICU. I took it just after surgery, when a woman in gray scrubs told me I was having a stroke. Mask, tubes, exhausted. Something in me knew it was worth holding onto.
I drew it.
It stayed on my nightstand in the sober house—one of the first things I saw every morning. Before new routines. Before job searches. Before meetings. It reminded me, quietly, of the life I was trying to leave behind. When I got cocky, it brought me back.
Another guy in treatment saw the drawing and asked if I would make one for him. A few weeks earlier, he’d collapsed in the shower from an alcohol-related blood pressure crash. His family had pushed him into treatment, but somewhere along the way, something shifted. He wanted to mark that moment.
He asked me to paint him standing in sunlight.
I gave it to him on his last day.
We lost touch eventually, but I still think about that moment—how simple it was, and how much it carried.
Both of those images had a function. They weren’t about skill or display. They were there to say:
this happened, and it mattered.
That’s what I’ve been circling with these drawings.
Not dramatic scenes. Not perfect renderings. Just something clear enough that a person can recognize themselves in a specific moment—something they might want to keep, or give to someone else.
I’ve started thinking of them as Marks of Transformation.
Here’s a recent piece:
“Cathy” - 12x16” - Graphite on hot pressed water color paper
I have a couple of spots open for April.
If you have a photo that already feels like it holds something like that, I’m happy to take a look.