A Montreal artist is using cancer as her catalyst.
Cheryl Braganza paints in acrylic and batik style. Her works range from portraiture to still life, and are infused with lush, saturated colour and movement.
In 2005 Braganza was diagnosed with the bone-marrow cancer multiple myeloma. She was told she had three months to live with conventional treatment, but beat the odds and the cancer went into remission.
Recently the cancer has come back.
It brought with it a force and a purpose to her creative flow.
"I have so much inside me that I feel has to come out, and I feel I'm driven because of my recent diagnosis with cancer," Braganza said.
"It's almost like I feel privileged to have had cancer because all this would never have come out," she said. "I'm not scared. No I'm not scared, not like I was before."
She is not worried about how much time she has left, but how much she can do with that time.
"If I can fill whatever I have left, with all these different gifts, than I will have done what I had to do in life," she said.
History
Braganza was born in Bombay, India, and raised in Lahore Pakistan. She started painting as a young woman in the sixties when her parents sent her to London's Trinity College to study music.
She arrived in Montreal in late August of 1966, took sculpture classes and reveled in Expo '67.
Last year she won the 2008 "Woman of the Year" award from the Montreal Council of Women, "for having excelled in helping immigrant women to integrate, to be involved in human rights and to become empowered by communicating with them through the arts," according to their website.
Art on display
Some of her works will be on display as part of a show, "My Journey Within." It can be seen on Sunday June 14 from noon until 5 p.m. at 1070 St. Mathieu.
