About the Artist…

With a double major in fine arts and art education, Pat McCormick taught art in high school and was later employed in an experimental program she created using art as a way of healing while working with at-risk youth. She met the love of her life and married Ed Walsh. After the birth of their third son, Pat set aside painting because of the time demands related to family life. She volunteered in various leadership roles in her sons' school and in the broader community. When Pat resumed painting, her kitchen table showed her on-going drive to balance art with life: next to dough about to be rolled for apple slices might rest a painting with colors still wet from a wash.
Mid-stream in a life rich in relationships, Pat freely engaged in painting, creative teaching, leading retreats and creative art experiences. These art experiences included healing, personal growth and/or spiritual development in a variety of settings: at a community center for healing and art, in three hospitals and with Jesuit novices in formation. One opportunity led to another, all to her great joy.
Along the way, Pat faced temporary and recurring health issues -- migraines, an irritated nerve in her painting arm, a bout with Lyme’s disease, swollen discs in her neck – complicated by paradoxical reaction to medications. Through these health issues, Pat developed a desire to offer therapeutic presence to others who suffered. She developed skills in healing touch and became a Master in Reiki therapy combining healing touch with meditative art practices to facilitate wellness.
In the midst of her healing work with others, and over a span of years Pat was diagnosed with a series of challenging chronic conditions – life-threatening blood disorders, Lupus, Common Variable Immune Disease or Deficiency, with concurrent complicating orthopedic issues and side-effects of treatment. When words could not go deep enough to name and express the effects of these health problems on her whole being, Pat turned to sketching to express what she was experiencing, to give a face to her evolving, ever-deepening sense of vulnerability.
Over time and living through so many experiences, Pat created a body of sketches. She offers some of them here in the hope they may give a visual voice to others' deep, un-able to be spoken experiences and trace a companioning path through their times of innocence, pain, hope and triumph, to bear witness to their lives.