Artist’s Work Pulses With New Life After Open-Heart Surgery and a Series of Hallucinations

Marc Vitali | February 13, 2025, 7:26 pm

Artist Shar Coulson in her studio. (Courtesy of Shar Coulson)

A serious health scare became an unexpected catalyst for change for a Chicago-based artist.

While recovering from open-heart surgery in 2021, Shar Coulson experienced trippy visions that ultimately shaped her artwork.

The paintings she made are the focus of “NIGHT SIGHT: Illuminating the Mind’s Eye Through Darkness,” an exhibition at the International Museum of Surgical Science — the Gold Coast museum of medicine that also boasts a healthy contemporary art program.

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Coulson spoke with WTTW News about her unusual encounter with the healing powers of art and science.

WTTW News: In January 2021 you were diagnosed with endocarditis, an infection of the heart valves. How had your health been up to then?

Shar Coulson: I’d never been in a hospital except to visit!

Any idea how you contracted it?

Coulson: It was a fluke. They never really figured out why. The good thing was that the endocarditis was receptive to the antibiotics that Rush Hospital gave me. They took a week to figure everything out, to make sure the antibiotic was going to work, and then I went into open-heart surgery. It was pretty quick.

“Grateful Awakening” by Shar Coulson. (Courtesy of Shar Coulson)

While recovering from surgery you had two days of hallucinations. Were the visions abstract or concrete — or even narrative?

Coulson: It started out as just shapes, colors that were prismatic. And it was kind of horrible — they were prisms but super colorful. I’d open my eyes and look around the room, and I’d close my eyes and they’d come right back. I thought, God, this is so frightening. Is it going to last forever? I don’t want to look at stuff I don’t like!

On the second day I said: This is bullsh--. [laughs] Maybe I can change them. What if I think about what I want to see? Will I be able to see it? So I thought to myself, I want to fly into a forest and see birds and rabbits and trees and vegetation. I closed my eyes and I did exactly that, and it switched from the prisms to this unbelievable kind of digitized world and it was a total narrative, and I was like, I have a super power!

I woke up on the third day and when I closed my eyes I couldn’t see them anymore. They were gone. In some way I was thankful because I thought, I’m getting better, but in a weird way I was sad because I lost that power.

I did research and found out that when you’re under anesthesia with an open heart for a prolonged period of time you can have these kind of side effects, hallucinations and all kinds of things.

After this brush with mortality, when did you begin to make art again?

Coulson: I never once thought, ‘This is the end.’ All I could think about was: Am I going to be able to paint and make art again? And when I was still in bed but feeling good enough, I asked my husband to bring in art materials and that’s when I started doing a drawing a day. It was a long recovery, and I didn’t know how to be a patient, you know?

How did the experience affect your work?

Coulson: Before, I was an intuitive painter but I would still overthink everything. After all this, I trust my heart, my gut — whatever you want to call it. My paintings have grown. There’s a total rhythm to the work actually. It pulses.

The pictures started simple with just a white chalk pencil [on black paper] and they worked up to where I was using acrylic and water-based media as I got stronger.

Now I’m doing everything that I normally would’ve done, but I do it through the lens of this prism, this line that I crossed over into. It’s another way of looking at life and appreciating life that I didn’t have before.

The whole episode was so powerful for me that it came out through my work, and when you look at the pieces, they’re very organic. They almost look like they’re in space. They’re strong and soft and powerful. It’s not exactly what I saw, but it’s my artistic interpretation in my language of what those meant to me.

Abstract artwork by Shar Coulson. (Courtesy of Shar Coulson)

And was it your idea to contact the Museum of Surgical Science?

Coulson: My cardiologist, Dr. Annabelle Volgman, started the Rush Heart Center for Women, and she’s a big proponent of the arts. I came up with this idea of showing at the surgical science museum, and she said maybe I can help, and the rest worked out well.

And museums don’t usually sell work but…

Coulson: The work is for sale at the museum, which is not a normal thing to do. I give half of what I make back to the organization [Rush Heart Center for Women]. I wanted to do this in a larger way. I wanted to get the work out there and tell my story, because the fact that I went through what I did and instead of being freaked out by these hallucinations, they were inspirational to me.

Artists are always searching. It’s never good enough. It’s always, ‘What’s next?’ because you want to experiment and problem-solve. I just feel like now somehow I turned a corner, and it’s just flowing.

What else have you learned from this experience?

Coulson: Take some extra walks and enjoy nature. These kind of things make you realize that life is precious, but that you’re in control of it. You have all the power to keep yourself on the right track if you want to — well, not all the power, but you’ve got a lot of power.

The exhibition “NIGHT SIGHT: Illuminating the Mind’s Eye Through Darkness” is at the International Museum of Surgical Science through March 16.