These are examples from a complete 78-card Tarot deck, created in 2000. These were made with scissors, found images and glue. They were then colour-copied and laminated.

I had been involved briefly in the art world in 1995 when I helped to organize a Madonna-themed art show at A Viva Voce Gallery. I made some works for that show, but then went on to study journalism and didn’t think further about creating art. Someone in high school had told me I couldn’t draw, so I had never considered other media as outlets for my creativity.

After graduating from Ryerson Polytechnic University, I took on the project of making a Tarot deck as an exercise in spiritual literacy and healing. When I saw the completed deck, I was astonished how many people asked if I had used Photoshop. I saw how natural composition came to me, and I loved working with visual images. I understood then that art was a primary force in my life that had been sleeping.

Then an unusual lady came into the used book shop where I volunteered and told me that my life was about to take some terrible turns and that I would suffer many great losses in friendship and love. This was very upsetting and I thought she was nuts. But it was eerie that she saw such specific things in my life that she couldn’t have known. She said she was so sensitive to people’s feelings that it made her half-crazy but she had to warn me to have strength.

It was the day after I had bought a set of acrylic paints, thinking it would be fun to play with paint and images at the same time. I did not tell her about these. She simply told me to go home, open the paints, and work, because art was what was going to get me through the next decade alive.

A few days later, the bad news began. One of my best friends was diagnosed with AIDS. Art indeed kept me alive as I spent the next year at his side at home and in the hospital. After he passed away, another close friend and my two-year-old godchild both died suddenly and unexpectedly of cancer. I don’t know how I am still standing after the worst in the summer of 2005 when my beloved husband passed away at 31.

One of the greatest mysteries that the Tarot has taught me is that art heals, and another is that you can’t and won’t understand everything- but you must take life’s small gifts and use them to keep looking forward.