The Painted Blackbird

04/13/2026

I am still working on a Portrait Project featuring a grid of 100 strong women with chronic illness/autoimmune disease standing together. I need about 30 more women to participate to hit my goal.

I’m truly thankful for this community. Most of you have been with me through painting furniture/signs to abstract and landscape painting.

This is my “passion project” and not my forever painting. I now know why musical artists stray off their path. Sometimes something inside you tells you that it is important.

If this project resonates with you please consider joining or sharing with someone you know. I also have an autoimmune disease, which is why I’m working on this.

To participate, I will need:

Your name (for my records only)

A front-facing photo

I will edit the photo as needed. If you have any concerns about editing tools, please let me know.

You may choose one color for your portrait:

Pink – Experiences where stress or anxiety was suggested before diagnosis

Black and White – A more direct or standard diagnosis

Please choose which color you feel most comfortable with. ❤️‍🩹

I will share updates and details with participants by email. I’m just expressing my grief through art and this is a project I can’t do alone. I need help from others like me.

Thank you again for being part of this project. 🩷

Ann Smith

Please send information and photo to:

[email protected] or message me here.

04/12/2026

Title: Untitled
Acrylic on paper
16 by 20 inches framed
$200

A soft, expansive landscape where sky and earth meet in quiet balance. Layers of pale blue and white stretch across the top, suggesting drifting clouds and open air. Below, warm golds, greens, and muted earth tones create the feeling of distant land shaped by time and movement.

The textures are gentle but present; scraped, blended, and layered giving the surface depth and a sense of natural flow. Light seems to move across the piece, guiding the eye toward the horizon line and the calm beyond it.

04/12/2026

Title: Untitled
Acrylic on paper
16 by 20 inches framed
$200

There’s a certain kind of peace that comes after the storm. Not loud, not dramatic… just wide open and steady.

This piece is about that quiet space.
The moment when the sky clears, the ground feels solid again,
and you realize you made it through something hard.

The landscape is intentionally simple and a little worn,
layered with texture and movement because healing isn’t smooth. But the sky remains soft and hopeful, reminding us that calm always finds its way back.

For me, this painting reflects those stretches of life where things finally settle where strength shows up quietly, and breathing feels easier again.

A reminder that peace doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be present.

04/08/2026

Title: Lead Me Home
Acrylic on paper
16 by 20 inches framed
$200

This piece feels like a quiet return. The moment when the path becomes familiar again, even after a long and uncertain journey. Tall, shadowed trees rise like guardians, their trunks marked by time and weather, while soft bursts of green at the forest floor suggest life continuing, gently and persistently. There’s a sense of being guided, not rushed, back to safety, to belonging, to yourself.

The layered textures and earthy tones create depth and movement, as if the forest is breathing. The light peeking through the darkness hints at resilience and direction, making this painting feel especially meaningful for anyone who has walked through hardship and is finding their way forward again.

04/03/2026

Title: Holding Ground
Sold

04/03/2026

Title: Morning After the Storm
Sold

03/25/2026

My painting Mojo is coming back.

1. I’m on Spring Break.

2. I’m optimistic that my new treatment is working. If landscapes are back… I have to hope and think this is a good thing.

3. I’ve been diversifying where my paintings are hanging! Yay! Bartlett, LaGrange and Woodstock.

4. I’m building my Autoimmune project on Tik Tok. I’m trying to keep my postings on here about that to a minimum. If you are interested in more of that, please follow me there.

03/07/2026

I don’t know where I would be today without my art… and of course my family and friends. 🩷

I’m having a tired day today. Night, night.

To make art is to be human. ❤️

02/27/2026

Posting a day early for Rare Disease Awareness Day! Round 4 done today!! 🦓🖤🤍🩷

Now you know why I am so passionate about my- The Pink Gene Project. I’ve icluded information in my pictures. Can you help by participating or spreading the work?

Autoimmune and chronic pain aren’t rare and they aren’t “just anxiety.” About 8% of U.S. adults have an autoimmune disease, and 70–80% are women. Meanwhile, 1 in 4 women lives with chronic pain, and nearly 1 in 10 has high-impact pain that limits daily life.

Yet many women are first told their symptoms are stress, anxiety, or psychosomatic. Some studies show over half of patients with diseases like MS were initially misdiagnosed, and most say that dismissal caused lasting harm. Doctors are trained to “think horses, not zebras,” but rare diseases collectively affect 1 in 10 people, so sometimes the zebra is real. Women aren’t hysterical. They’re underdiagnosed.

02/13/2026

Chronic spoonie girls unite! Goals of this year:

1. Try to put this disease into remission.

2. If not remission, lessen autonomic symptoms.

3. Paint honest, therapeutic art for myself. Show it in artistic and hopefully medical spaces.

4. Paint more relatable art (a.k.a safe art), to pay for the materials to paint more honest art. Lol.

5. Empower other chronic illness warriors to fight the good fight. I know it is exhausting. Fight for yourself.

02/08/2026

I did a little something last night. LaGrange Art League Gallery & Studio

Artist Statement:

These paintings come from a period where my body became louder than my voice.

I wasn’t interested illustrating pain or diagnosis. I was trying to locate where pressure lives, where it travels, and what remains after it passes.

The vertical orientation matters. Each work has a centerline, a spine, a seam, a fault. Something holding the structure together while also threatening to split it apart.

These are not portraits, but they are bodily. They are records of containment, endurance, and quiet repair.

This work isn’t about breaking. It’s about what holds.

Titles:
Containment
Endurance
Repair