It’s incredible to look back to just five years ago, when I first started learning to paint as a neuroplasticity approach to chronic pain. As a Patient Partner and co-author in pain research projects, I’d become aware of research showing benefits of art appreciation and particularly of having an art practice on both chronic pain and cognitive issues.
Because I live with a midlife-onset Mild Cognitive Impairment and chronic pain, from one of my two rare diseases, I was intrigued. I’d wanted to learn to paint with watercolours since childhood, after watching my paternal grandfather paint beautifully (but with smelly oil pastels), so this brain-plasticity research was the catalyst that finally pushed pushed me to sign up for watercolour painting classes.
And I fell absolutely in love with watercolours, their luminosity, their transparency, and the challenge of dealing with a medium that often seems to have a life of its own.
I couldn’t believe it when one of my paintings won First Prize in an amateur art contest that same year, in 2021, then another First Prize followed in 2021. By 2023 I was entering exhibitions and contests for professional artists, earning an Honourable Mention in 2024 and a Second Prize in 2025 in Montréal-wide events. More recently I was juried into the national Federation of Canadian Artists (FCA) as an “Exhibiting Member”, and have been validated as a professional artist by the federal Canada Council for the Arts and the much more stringent provincial Regroupement des artistes en arts visuels du Québec or RAAV.
Along the way, my #ArtDespitePain initiative began, using my artwork to raise awareness of chronic pain conditions and sharing my art practice to encourage others living with persistent pain to try creative pursuits to distract the brain from pain.
My paintings have now been selected for several international juried art exhibitions, presented by Canada’s two preeminent national arts organizations – the FCA and the Society of Canadian Artists (SCA) – as well as galleries in Canada and the United States.
Each new jury acceptance into a national or international exhibition feels like a reward, like recognition of how far I’ve come since first picking up a paintbrush in 2021 as a neuroplasticity approach to my chronic pain and Mild Cognitive Impairment. And proof for others that it’s never to late to start something new!
On that note, I’ve just received confirmation that one of my semi-abstract watercolour paintings has been accepted into the “2026 Open International Online Juried Exhibition” of the SCA; one of only 180 artworks selected, among 1180 entries from across Canada and around the world!
Open since yesterday, this “significant exhibition reflects the SCA’s longstanding commitment to artistic excellence, professional standards, and diverse artistic practices. Through a carefully curated online format, the exhibition will showcase outstanding contemporary and representational artworks to a national and international audience.” You can view this online art show until May 15, 2026 on the SCA website, where you can easily find my contemporary artwork by entering my family name (Woods) into the art show’s search bar!
