Thursday, July 1, 2010

Anna-Maria - the artist

Anna-Maria Edgren is an established and well-known painter with an impressive production and numerous national and international exhibitions. Hand function is critical for everybody but for an artist it is such a distinct link between the brain’s idea to the hand’s ability to express sophisticated messages from mental image to the impression and interpretation by the viewer. Anna-Maria was hit by a car when pulling out from her driveway. She broke her neck and was left with loss of much of her motor control of the dominant hand. This devastating event and ensuing disability would have threatened creativity and inspiration for most of us. She was forced to perform her painting by squeezing the paintbrush between her two hands and the result was not encouraging to a former high-profile artist. Anna-Maria decided to embark on the demanding journey of reconstructive hand surgery followed by tough rehabilitation. She regained much of her hand control including whole-hand grip strength and key pinch. Her artistic abilities, accelerated by daily activities in the studio, showed remarkable progress and surprisingly she reappeared on exhibitions with new and exciting productions a couple of years after surgical reconstruction. Anna-Maria has participated in 20 joint exhibitions and 6 individual exhibitions during the past six years after surgery. Her own words about her art: “I have always been interested in human beings and particularly in humans moving. Humans in motion can be beautiful and full of drama and power. A change takes place and movement in its extreme fashion is frequently observed in sports – the motion is obvious and the drama is the path towards winning or losing”. Much of Anna-Marias’ current production relates to sports as evidenced by some of her “motion pictures” shown here. Thanks Anna-Maria for sharing with us your fate, struggle, comeback, success and for being such a source of inspiration to spinal cord injured persons.