As an artist Sharon Richardson paints light.

As a person, she pulled herself from darkness.

Richardson, a Natchez oil painter, suffers from post-polio syndrome, a neurological illness that produces weakness, pain and degeneration of muscles and at times muscle atrophy along with severe fatigue and other symptoms.

The PPS has severely limited her physical abilities, Richardson said.

“The list of things I can do is about this long,” Richardson said holding two fingers about an inch apart.

“The list of things I can no longer do is probably this long,” she said spreading her hands about a foot apart.

The diagnosis came seven years ago in 2002.

At first, Richardson said she feared she would never be able to paint again. She began painting after graduating from the University of Georgia with a degree in entomology and couldn’t imagine living without the creative release painting provided her.

“I didn’t want to be here if I couldn’t paint,” she said.

Determined to regain the ability to paint, Richardson began to improvise.

The disease left her without use of her once-dominant right hand, so Richardson is now a lefty.

She completed her first left-handed painting one month after she began the process of switching hands.

The muscle weakness and degeneration stole her ability to grip small objects, so Richardson made her brush handles bigger.

“I had these straws and they were lightweight so I just Duck taped them together,” she said. “They’ve lasted since 2002. I’ve had to change the brushes, but the straws are the same.”

Richardson once loved to paint outdoors, but now she is confined to the studio in her Natchez house.

“Now I paint from photographs,” she said. “I go to the place and photograph it and really take in and feel the place, then come home and paint.”

Richardson once could paint for hours, meticulously perfecting each detail on her canvas. Now she can only paint in 15-minute increments throughout the day.

“I have a digital timer that I set for 15 minutes, and when it goes off, I have to stop,” she said. “There is no choice. I’m preserving and conserving what I have left.”

She can no longer write, so she installed voice-recognition software on her computer.

And with each improvisation she slowly began to take her life back from the malady that left her feeling isolated.

“When it comes to painting, I paint light,” she said. “I like sun-dappled roads and still life and landscapes, but as long as there is good light anything is pretty.”

Hanging on nearly every wall in her house is an original painting completed by Richardson. Some are large, some are small; some are nature and some are jelly jars; some are Mississippi scenes and other are from Italy. But what they all have in common, Richardson said, is light.

“I don’t have a favorite thing to paint,” she said. “When I look at something I’m going to paint, I look at the light first.

“My favorite color is yellow because it reminds me so much of light.”

A native of Woodville, Richardson’s mother is still an active artist. Richardson lived in Jackson for several years before moving to Natchez in 1995 when she married Jim Barnett.

“He always tries to get me to stop before I will,” she said. “He’s always looking out for my interest and well-being. He’s a really good support.”

Her work is displayed locally at ArtsNatchez and in collections in Atlanta, Birmingham, Ala., Jackson and New Orleans.

PPS affects up to 60 percent of all polio survivors according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. For Richardson, she doesn’t even remember the virus that caused her current illness.

“I was only 2-months old when I had polio,” she said. “I spent two months in the hospital, but from that time on I had what I thought was a normal life.”

Richardson said she noticed some muscle weakness when she was growing up and in adulthood, but it was never debilitating so she just wrote it off.

“I couldn’t do some of the things my sister could do,” she said. “She could hold my children up over her head, and I could never do that. I just thought she was stronger than me.

“I never really gave it much thought.”

But in 2002, Richardson said she could no longer ignore the symptoms.

“I was painting, and my right arm began feeling weak and very, very heavy. Finally, it got to the point where I couldn’t even lift my arm,” she said.

Richardson went to a doctor in Jackson and then to another in Boston before begin given her diagnosis of PPS.

“Post polio is a diagnosis of exclusion,” she said. “It involves many, many, often painful, tests and after the diagnosis there is nothing really to treat it.”

And not only is there not a good treatment plan, Richardson said her case is different than most.

“I’m what they call an upside-downer,” she said. “(The PPS) affects my upper half where in most it affects the legs, so doctors really didn’t know what to do with me.

“For most people it is back in the braces, back in the wheel chair, where I look basically normal.”

And she attempts to make each day as normal as possible.

“I can still cook, drive and paint,” she said. “I just can’t do all three on the same day.”

The biggest way she is keeping life semi-normal is by keeping a positive attitude, and she hopes her outlook is contagious.

“My hope is that people are encouraged by my story and what I’ve been able to do,” she said. “If one person is inspired to overcome what ever their challenge is because of me, then I am blessed.”