What is Painting Dementia: A Son’s Reflections on Care, Memory and Meaning, and how did it come to be?
Painting Dementia: A Son’s Reflections on Care, Memory and Meaning is a series of 17 large paintings, a collection reflecting my struggles as a caregiver. The series traces the evolution of one caregiver’s inner landscape over time. It documents what endurance as a caregiver feels like from the inside.
In 2017, I came to Phoenix to help both aging parents, my father, John, who was 94 and living with dementia (he passed in 2020), and my mother, Ann, who is 95 and whose decline began around my father’s death. Today, I provide full-time care for my mother.
Despite being a full-time caregiver, I continued to pursue my work as an artist. As the realities of the harder elements of caregiving for a person living with dementia came into play, my art became a cathartic release of the daily struggles.
I did not initially conceive this series as a unified project. I painted in response to lived experience: exhaustion, confusion, responsibility, tenderness. Only later did I recognize the arc that had formed.
This project continues to grow. The paintings are also part of a manuscript filled with words, The Architecture of Grace: Painting Dementia – A Son’s Reflections on Care, Memory, and Meaning (unpublished), of my daily caregiving experiences. The book adds context to the paintings, and I’ve tried to articulate the daily repetition of caregiving — the way meaning must be constructed rather than discovered.
Who initially inspired you to grapple with dementia?
My parents and I have been close throughout my life. When they asked for help, of course, I responded. I had assumed the responsibilities would be helping with normal tasks. And, I decided to enroll in Arizona State University’s Master of Social Work program to understand what would be most helpful to my aging parents.
I graduated in 2020, when the COVID-19 epidemic was in full force. From 2020 through today, I have been immersed in care that has been 16-hours a day, 7 days a week. The remaining hours have been used for my art.
How has working on dementia-related art changed you?
Working on dementia has dramatically affected me and my art. They are one and the same. The “Dementia Series,” which includes the paintings on dementia as well as the manuscript, is a critical look at the caregiver’s seemingly impossible task.
I promised my parents I would do everything I could to keep them in their home. Now it is just my mother, and regardless of the incredible challenge, I won’t walk away. The art has allowed me to give a voice to this most difficult time of my life.
How has Painting Dementia been received?
The paintings that make up Painting Dementia have been posted on Facebook (as well as my website), and the response has been incredible.
As I work on the manuscript, I have provided it to one person who is deeply involved with memory care. She said the book brought her to tears.
It is important for me that the work does not seek to provide false hope. Instead, it seeks recognition, an honest reflection of the cost, complexity, and quiet persistence embedded in long-term care.
This work is dedicated to: For my mother, Ann Koleszar, whose light remains even when memory fades. This work is not about what is lost, but about what love continues to remember.
And to my siblings, Irma, John, and Jim. Decisions around dementia are never simple. You have supported my choices, even when other paths might have offered an easier way. More importantly, you have provided the needed reprieves when the weight of this journey has felt, at times, unbearable for us all.
Find all of the paintings in Painting Dementia: A Son’s Reflections on Care, Memory and Meaning on the website.
