TALENT FINDS A WAY
PAINTING from her bed or wheelchair, Blackbutt artist Janet Skinner refuses to allow her diagnosis to stop her pursuing her passion.
“Life is very precarious for me. What I can do in life one day, I don't know for sure if I’ll be able to do it the next,” she said.
Mrs Skinner’s creative journey has been somewhat tied to being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in recent years – an illness that has moulded and shaped her brain, transforming her into an author and then into an autobiographical artist.
“My brain changed about five years ago. I’d never been a writer, but all of a sudden I woke up and was able to write four illustrated books,” she said.
But as her MS progressed,
Mrs Skinner’s literary talent disappeared.
“I was an author, but that’s now gone,” she said.
However replacing words have been images from her past, which she recreated in a collection of artworks.
Mrs Skinner previously owned the Janet Skinner Gallery in Blackbutt.
She now exhibits and sells her work online at