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Four Artists Who Redefined Their Own Paths Forward
They paint using only their mouths, and share what adapting has taught them about purpose
VIDEO: Finding Purpose After Spinal Cord Injury: Brom’s Story
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In Mariam Paré’s art studio in Naperville, a western suburb of Chicago, the first thing you notice isn’t the paintbrush in her mouth. It’s the rhythm of her movements. She turns from the canvas, lowers her head, taps the brush in water, wipes it on a towel, dabs color and pivots back to paint in one unbroken loop. It’s like watching a beautifully choreographed dance, the kind of muscle memory that comes from years of practice.
Paré faced a steep learning curve: “It took me years to learn to paint with my mouth as good as I did with my hands.”
Mustafa Hussain
The 50-year-old works for hours at a time, her face just inches from her work, creating vibrant portraits and landscapes that explode with color. Her art has been exhibited in Chicago and appeared on greeting cards and calendars sold worldwide. In 2014, the actor Pierce Brosnan invited Paré to his Malibu home after learning of a painting she’d done of him as James Bond.
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“He told me the reason he bought the painting was because he paints, too,” Paré says. “What touched him about my work is that I use so much color, and you would think, given all of the challenges I’ve faced, that I might be sad or something. The fact that I saw so much color in the world, despite everything, really touched him.”
Painter Mariam Paré, 50, of Naperville, Illinois, has been a quadriplegic since 1996. She’s part of a tiny but dynamic group of artists worldwide who practice mouth painting.
Mustafa Hussain
Paré is part of a small but vibrant community of artists across the globe who work within their limitations, forced by circumstance to radically alter everything they knew about creating art. Their stories teach us something profound about aging, adaptation and the resilience of the creative spirit — lessons that resonate far beyond the canvas.
Many older adults know what it’s like to have their bodies set new terms. These four artists have spent decades discovering what happens when you refuse to let loss define the perimeter of your life. Their tools changed, their rituals evolved, but their creative core remained.
The bridge between therapy and vocation
In 1996, while the then 20-year-old Paré was visiting friends in Richmond, Virginia, she was shot in the back by someone who was never caught. The bullet severed her spinal cord, leaving her a quadriplegic. She had trained as an artist, studying for a semester at College of DuPage in suburban Chicago, and had recently moved to San Francisco with hopes of attending art school there. But after the shooting, it looked like she might never paint again.
“After any life-changing injury or disability, there’s a lot of uncertainty,” says Paré. “Especially with such a profound disability, there aren’t a lot of things you know [about] how your future is going to be.” She realized she needed to get back to art, but she just didn’t know how.
During rehabilitation, an occupational therapist taught Paré to grasp pens and pencils with her mouth for tasks she could no longer do with her hands. When she learned to write her signature, she realized something: “If I can write my name with a pen, I could probably paint this way.”
The transition was humbling. Before her injury, Paré had been painting at a very high level with her hands. “When I transferred to the technique of painting with my mouth, I wasn’t very good,” she says. “I had artistic knowledge in my mind, but I wasn’t able to translate it yet. And it took me years to learn to paint with my mouth as good as I did with my hands.”
Her first completed painting that felt truly successful was a portrait of Bob Marley. “I was like, ‘OK, that kind of looks like Bob Marley’,” she says, laughing. “I knew then, ‘OK, I have some potential here.’ ”
Paré’s work has been shown in Chicago and used on calendars and greeting cards sold worldwide.
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The community that changed everything
Paré’s professional breakthrough came when she received a scholarship from Mouth and Foot Painting Artists (MFPA). It’s the American chapter of an international cooperative that traces its roots to 1957, when German painter Erich Stegmann, a polio survivor who grew up unable to use his arms, assisted in forming a self-help association with other disabled artists. MFPA USA says student members receive scholarship support to fund materials and training, and a monthly stipend based on their skill level.
MFPA reproduces member artwork on items such as greeting cards, calendars and prints, with more than 90 percent of the profits going to the artists in the association, according to New Mobility, a U.S. disability and lifestyle magazine.
“That was the first taste I ever got of sharing my art with such a great audience,” Paré says. “People from all over the world see my pictures and paintings on greeting cards and calendars, and they’d write me emails. Knowing that people were actually buying my work and connecting with it gave me community. And that made me want to keep doing it.”
Paré first gained acclaim after receiving a scholarship from Mouth and Foot Painting Artists (MFPA), the American branch of an international cooperative founded in 1957. “That was the first taste I ever got of sharing my art with such a great audience,” she says.
Mustafa Hussain
MFPA is part of a larger international network. The Association of Mouth and Foot Painting Artists of the World (VDMFK), headquartered in Liechtenstein, represents hundreds of artists across 69 countries. While the organization supports both mouth and foot painters, the majority work with their mouths.
The path from injury to artistry follows a similar pattern for many in these organizations. Seattle painter Brom Wikstrom, 72, grew up in a commercial-art family, apprenticed with his father and made signs in New Orleans before a headfirst dive into the Mississippi River left him paralyzed at 21.
In rehab, where he remained for almost a year, Wikstrom began painting basic colors and shapes, simple exercises to help him relearn balance and composition while holding a brush in his mouth.
The extended stay gave Wikstrom crucial time to master basic tasks with his mouth before attempting more complex work. “I was using a stick in my mouth to operate a keyboard. Toward the end of my rehab, I started making some images,” he recalls.
At first, he created abstract compositions inspired by artists like Jackson Pollock and Mark Tobey, a noted Northwest artist who developed a technique similar to Pollock’s based on Japanese calligraphy. “I thought, ‘Well, I’ll just kind of emulate that until I get used to holding the brush this way,’” Wikstrom says.
For more information about the Association of Mouth and Foot Painting Artists, visit mfpausa.com.
Over time, it started to feel less like practice and more like actual painting. Wikstrom began taking classes, then teaching others, showing adult students and schoolchildren how mouth painting worked. He ended up building an arts program at a children’s hospital. What started as an adaptation became a passion that inspired him to share his skill.
After moving back in with his parents, who gave up their ground-floor bedroom so he could have it as a studio, Wikstrom painted every day. “It was really the only thing I could think of that was giving me some sense of compensation for not being able to do all the other stuff I would have loved to have done,” he says.
It took two or three years before he felt he’d developed his style. The day he received notice that MFPA had accepted him as a student member remains one of the happiest of his life. It happened to fall on the same day as his first solo exhibition at a Seattle gallery.
“The association opened doors I never imagined,” Wikstrom says. “But more than that, it connected me with other artists who understood exactly what I was going through. That community became essential.”
Finding freedom in the work
For Christopher Kuster, 55, who lives in Tarpon Springs, Florida, mouth painting offered something beyond professional success. It was a liberation from the physical limitations that defined his daily life.
Growing up, Kuster was always doodling in his math books and drawing on book covers. After school, he went into automotive work, custom-painting cars and trucks. Then, in 1992, when he was just 21 years old, he had a diving accident that left him paralyzed.
“For the first couple of years, it was all, ‘Why me? Why me?’” Kuster says. “And then one day, it was like a light switch went off in my head. ‘Why not me? What makes me any different than the next guy?’ You’ve got to go forth and do the best with whatever cards you’re dealt.”
His spouse’s sister, a rehab nurse, saw him writing his name one day with a pencil in his mouth and bought him his first set of paints and brushes. “My first paintings were very rudimentary,” he says. “And now I have artwork all over the world.”
Kuster experiences chronic pain and muscle spasms, but when he’s painting watercolor landscapes and cartoons in his toy-filled studio, those ailments seem to fade. “When you’re painting, it’s like you turn all that stuff off,” he says. “The other side of your brain takes over. I don’t seem to hurt as bad anymore. I don’t seem to worry about what’s on TV. I just become immersed in the artwork. I hate to use the corny word of being free again, but it sort of does give you that freedom, even if it’s a mental freedom.”
His automotive cartoons have become his signature, created from photos people send of their vehicles. “I was a car guy my whole life,” he says. “When I was 16 years old and I discovered cars and girls, that was it.”
Antonio Davis, 51, a quadriplegic since 1994 who had studied graphic design and art at a vocational school before his injury, began mouth painting after extended stays in a rehabilitation facility and a nursing home.
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When tragedy becomes a second chance
Like Paré, Antonio Davis’ life was changed violently when he was young. On October 21, 1994, the 19-year-old Davis was on his way home with his cousin in Chicago when they were approached by two men who wordlessly shot both of them. His cousin died instantly. Davis survived, but the gunshot to his chest severed his spinal cord, leaving him a quadriplegic.
Davis didn’t think he would enjoy mouth painting when he first took it up. “To be honest, I was worried about looking weird,” he says. But once he got the hang of it, “it just started to flow.”
Mustafa Hussain
After six months at a rehabilitation facility and two years in a nursing home, Davis began to paint again; he’d studied graphic design and art in vocational high school. But when an occupational therapist suggested mouth painting, it seemed foreign at first.
“To be honest, I was worried about looking weird, painting with my mouth,” he says. “And I had some backlash, too, from my family. Like, ‘Why aren’t you trying to use your hands?’ But once I got the technique of sitting upright, not falling over my chair, putting a brush in my mouth, having the correct easel, it just started to flow.”
With his MFPA scholarship, Davis took night classes with a professional artist who taught him color theory and composition. “I took the scholarship very seriously,” he says. “And a few of my paintings, like my first series of still life and landscapes, I was so proud of myself because I started feeling the colors, the complementing colors, the composition.”
Last year, as Davis approached 50, he faced serious health challenges that kept him from painting as regularly as he’d like. Still, he managed to complete eight paintings he’s proud of, including Embrace, a portrait of a father holding his baby son.
Davis used an MFPA scholarship to learn color theory and composition from a professional artist. “I took the scholarship very seriously,” he says.
Mustafa Hussain
“Us as fathers, us as men, we don’t get enough love or enough representation of fatherly love,” Davis says. “I know our sons need it. Especially the African American community, we need it desperately.”
His work has traveled far beyond gallery walls. In 2018, Davis painted a portrait of President Barack Obama and was invited to present it at an Obama Foundation event. In 2019, he was featured on Steve, Steve Harvey’s daytime talk show.
“It just let me know once again that my perseverance and my resilience is at an all-time high at 50 years old,” says Davis. “So I’m ready to embark on a new masterpiece.”
5 ways to overcome your limitations
Your body may be slowing down, but that doesn’t mean you have to. These practical strategies prove you can keep pushing yourself creatively even when your body has other ideas.
Trade speed for ritual
Mariam Paré works in an unbroken loop: rinse, dab, paint, rest, repeat. The same sequence, the same order, day after day. It’s not glamorous, but it works. A hallmark 2009 study in the European Journal of Social Psychology on habit creation found that it took between 18 and 254 days to form one, with an average of 66 days, and consistency mattered more than intensity. Build one short, repeatable session into your day and protect it like a doctor’s appointment. When raw speed isn’t available anymore, consistency becomes your momentum.
Make community your infrastructure
Brom Wikstrom didn’t rely on willpower alone. He joined an organization that set deadlines, provided mentors and delivered feedback. It’s a smart move. A 2024 study in Healthcare analyzing over 2,600 participants found that structured support systems dramatically improved habit formation, particularly for complex behaviors. That sense of community can provide other benefits, too, such as reducing social isolation. About 25 percent of older adults struggle with loneliness, according to a 2023 report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, a risk factor for mortality comparable to smoking. External accountability keeps the work moving when motivation dips. Find your people, whether through a local art class, an online creative community or something else entirely.
Let the body edit, not erase
Chris Kuster didn’t fight his limitations; he redesigned around them. A larger tabletop, paper clamps, longer brushes, media that agreed with his energy levels. Ergonomics research published in the International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science in 2025 showed that workplace adaptations, such as adjustable furniture and modified tools, significantly reduced physical strain among aging workers. The principle applies to creative work, too. Adjust your scale, tools and posture so that the process accommodates you now, not you 10 years ago.
Engineer recovery into the process
Wikstrom and Antonio Davis both plan around recovery the way other artists plan around inspiration. They work in timed blocks, then pause. Wikstrom favors watercolors over oils because, with his face inches from the canvas, he doesn’t need to be inhaling solvent fumes all day. Davis breaks larger paintings into manageable passages to ease the strain on his jaw and neck. Rest isn’t weakness; it’s part of the method.
Curate what matters
Davis and Paré both learned that when your bandwidth narrows, choose fewer projects. Davis focuses on subjects that feel necessary: portraits that radiate tenderness, scenes that hold quiet dignity. Creative activities in older adults help to maintain cognitive function and enhance emotional well-being and a sense of purpose. A short, meaningful list beats a sprawling to-do, so when you can’t do everything, do what matters most.
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