Have you ever heard about people who wake from a coma with new skills or an accent? For Brian Ouellette, medical trauma brought a more vivid view of the world. “Colors are totally different ever since the hospital – they’re more vibrant and brighter than I ever saw before.”

Ouellette was 35 when he was overcome by a tidal wave of seizures: so many, so fast, doctors had to put him under. Six days later, when he woke, Ouellette had to relearn how to walk. The cause? Functional neurological disorder, a condition in which brain signals misfire. It can affect anyone, though very few wake seeing colors as lucidly as Ouellette.

The emergency brought another new experience: restlessness. “Before FND, I was sympathetic and easy going and peaceful. But it’s like my brain got rewired; I’m more emotional now.”

Art became his solace, first passively – YouTube videos on color theory and art history – then more actively: “One day, I was just like, ‘Let’s go to the art store’ – so I bought a bunch of paint, bunch of brushes, and a canvas and I just went ham on it.”

Ouellette approaches a canvas more carefully now. “I have a ritual: I uncover the canvas, sit it on an A-frame, and walk back and forth for days,” he said. “I paint in my head first. I think about the color composition, how it’s gonna be laid out, what brushes I’m gonna use, and how I’m gonna execute it until like, ‘I’m ready, I got it.’”

Sometimes Ouellette uses iconic images like Picasso’s Guernica as his basis; other times he draws on what he sees during seizures. “I get images of these paintings that I want to do and I obsess over it,” he said.

“I paint the painting in my head before I even paint it on a canvas.”

As painful as his emergency and recovery were, he’s grateful: “It was sad to go through, but would I be painting if it wasn’t for it? No. Painting saved my life. It really did.”