Chicago artist Minnie Watkins turns stroke into triumph on canvas

CHICAGO (CBS) — Imagine a medical emergency that suddenly takes away what you love most: the way you see the world and yourself.

That’s exactly what happened to Chicago artist Minnie Watkins. But Watkins turned her stroke into a triumph.

Watkins remembers the date: June 25, 2020. Her brother had recently passed away and she had just finished writing his obituary.

“I had a stroke two days before his funeral,” Watkins said.

Watkins’ world is divided into two parts: before and after the stroke that changed her life and her work. And of course, the date everything changed was right in the middle of the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Watkins spent nearly six weeks at Stroger Hospital in Cook County, isolated from her caregivers and the sounds of pandemic despair.

The scariest thing, she said, was “hearing code blues like it was regular music playing all the time.” Code blue is an emergency situation involving cardiac or respiratory arrest.

Stroger was followed by rehabilitation at Schwab Rehabilitation Hospital, and that was a big decision.

“After the stroke, I just had to paint,” Watkins said. “I had to feel like an artist again.”

But picking up the brush wasn’t easy. Watkins’ brain had changed.

“I didn’t know what to do,” she said, “and I tried to figure it out. It’s something I’ve been doing for 30 years.”

For decades, Watkins was known for her portraits. But after the stroke, faces no longer looked the same to her.

“I had to retrain myself to see, and how to see what I saw in my head and put it on canvas,” she said.

So Watkins found a new direction when a friend told her she should paint what she knew: stroke and recovery.

The paintings after the stroke show Watkins’ struggle. While her paintings before her stroke were realistic portraits – including one of Ida B. Wells that ended up in the permanent collection of former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton – the paintings afterward show abstract lines of confusion and crossed boundaries. They are images of a brain in motion.

Later more concrete work was full of symbolism that alluded to her challenges. One shows a face covered in chains, chain-link fencing and barbed wire, with the bars and a brick wall on top of the neck.

In “Left Brain, Right Brain” the two sides of Watkins’ brain battle against each other. The left side is black and white.

“You see very clear shapes, circles, diamonds, lines – those things are very rigid. They are literal,” she said.

But the right side is full of color.

“And you see paint bleeds and free-flowing shapes,” Watkins said.

Watkins hopes her recent exhibit at Sinai Health spoke loud and clear. There were 27 works of art on display, all depicting her journey and determination.

“I knew I was going to come out because I had a piece about it all the time. I wasn’t afraid and I refused to do that. I chose not to be afraid,” she said. “I just made that choice.”

Watkins said she was feeling better.

“My art has expanded. It’s become broader. I’m not in a box anymore,” she said. “It’s a God-given talent and I want to make a difference with what God has given me.”