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Karen Wheeer    Las Vegas

Karen Wheeler hides a rosebud in every painting. "Snow Owl", a piece she donated to the MDA Art Collection. Photo by Jeffery Green.

She usually paints animals, but also creates some surrealistic and humorous works, such as her "mousquito" - a mouse with a stinger and wings - and "turtle dove" - a dove with a tortoise shell and other reptilian features.

Wheeler, 44, currently has art in three galleries in Las Vegas, and sells her greeting cards in a dozen places on the West Coast. She has collectors all over the world, and her artwork can be seen at http://www.karenwheeler.com on the Internet.

For her, art "is the ultimate freedom of expression, because I don't need any help from anyone while I'm painting."

Wheeler, who has spinal muscular atrophy, said she often completes paintings in sections - an approach she said some painters don't like. But the method saves a lot of physical movement for her.

Karen Wheeler

"I work in sections because it's easier to stay in one area and complete it than it is to move all around," Wheeler said. She also paints smaller-size works that are easier to handle. In the past she would rotate the surface of her work and paint it upside down to complete bigger pieces.

Wheeler uses a dry brush technique to create remarkable textures in her paintings, such as hair, feathers, animal scales and wood grain. She mainly uses watercolors on illustration board, a medium that requires planning ahead, since the paints stain the surface of the board.

"You need to determine beforehand what areas need to stay white and you need to be careful working around those," Wheeler said.

Adaptive devices she's used include Ace bandages for hand supports and an arm brace made of a moldable plastic with rubber bands to suspend it. Know your own needs and work with a good occupational therapist when looking for adaptive art techniques, Wheeler advised.

Household objects can also come in handy, such as drinking straws that can be used to extend paintbrushes, pencils or other drawing tools. Also, experiment with what artistic medium works the best for you: Oils are thicker and take a little more strength to spread but can be thinned with certain additives. Watercolors, dyes and inks are thinner, but more permanent, Wheeler said.

"I'm not fast enough to paint the traditional watercolor style, which is large, transparent, sloppy washes, and you have to work very fast before the paper dries," she said. "I had to develop my own tight illustration style, but I'm happy with my work and the reactions I get from others when they view it."

Her advice to aspiring artists is the same wisdom that Bev Doolittle, a very successful painter, once shared with her.

"Do what you enjoy, or you're not going to do it well," Wheeler said. For her, enjoyment includes avoiding subject matter that sells but isn't satisfying to create.

Above all, just keep experimenting, Wheeler said. "Art can be the key to freedom for anyone who is severely limited. Art is in the mind, and a person doesn't have to be physically strong to create or produce it."

Ken Turner    Greensboro, N.C.

The playful stars and sailboats in "Stars Over Harbor" are typical of Ken Turner's surrealist and abstract style. Photo by Steve Cash.

When a hospitalization led to a tracheostomy and a reduction of independence for Ken Turner, he had to tap all of his creative juices to find a new way to make his colorful paintings.

"I lost a lot of my strength in my arms, and when I came home, I couldn't feed myself like I had been doing," Turner said. "I couldn't do my artwork. I was extremely depressed, but I knew that I had to get back to my painting."

Turner, who has SMA, ultimately invented a setup that includes a specialized clamp, a lazy Susan, Velcro and tape.

His canvas board is attached to a lazy Susan with Velcro. The lazy Susan is attached to a board that's fastened via a dual-headed clamp to a regular art table. Turner, who paints in a reclined position to use the fullest range of motion of his arm, then holds a cup of water between his legs for wetting his paintbrushes.

His containers of paint are attached with Velcro to the board, and the lazy Susan allows him to turn the work for better access.

Ken Turner

"Then I tape my brush to my middle finger. I can hold my brush, but the tape gives me a lot more stability," Turner said.

The work site isn't as complicated as it sounds and only takes a few minutes to set up, Turner said, but "it took me about a year to figure out exactly how to do it."

The dual-headed clamp is the key item. It has a strong, viselike clamp on one end, and a regular clamp on the other, with a bendable bar in between. The device is similar to what many people use to hold up reading materials, Turner said.

Finding the right specialist who could help was also important, he said.

"A lady from Assistive Technology [Partnership] was the one that said, 'Well, you're definitely good at figuring out how to do it, but you just need this clamp,'" he said. Turner, a self-taught artist who turns 38 this month, creates colorful abstract and surreal paintings in watercolors and acrylics. He keeps them small - 6-by-8 inches is his most comfortable size - because if they're any bigger the lazy Susan won't turn.

Along with his method, Turner's artistic priorities got re-arranged after his hospitalization. Those changes have recently led to some of his best work, he said.

"Before, I painted what people wanted me to paint. And when I had to go without painting for a year, I made up my mind that when I got back to it, I was going to paint what I wanted to," he said.

His new attitude also empowered him to take some artistic risks.

"When I got out of school, I tended to say, well, I couldn't do that because I didn't have any lessons, or I couldn't paint that because it's way too hard," Turner said.

"If you just try, sometimes it makes a big difference. Don't underestimate yourself."