Even from childhood, Donna had had no question about what she wanted to do: she wanted to paint. When it came time for university, she studied fine arts obtaining a degree at the University of New Hampshire, and later on she studied briefly at Queen’s University in New York City.

Then, after doing art-related work for a few years, she came to Madonna House. She was drawn to community life and prayer, and it was Catherine’s vision of the artist that inspired her to believe that here she could fulfill both callings that God had placed in her heart.

After she became a member of the community, Donna was assigned to our handicraft center where we worked together for many years. Recognizing her gifts, Catherine also assigned her to paint two days a week.

At first Donna screened off a five foot by five foot area by one of the large windows. The rest of us who worked there tried hard not to disturb her on her painting days.

When we acquired St. Mary’s, she was given a large room there for a studio. There she could work uninterrupted and have a place to store and frame her paintings. Eventually even her work as head sacristan, which she had been doing for several years, was gradually given over to someone else, and some time in the early 1990s, Donna became a fulltime painter.

Donna was so grateful for the time given to her to paint, time which she considered sacrosanct. She was diligent and focused and often spent even her day off painting.

In 1993, my own dream of painting icons was fulfilled, and eventually I, too, was given a studio—across the hall from Donna.

We shared many hopes, dreams and struggles, and over the years these bonded our friendship. She was a woman of great sensitivity and compassion, but she could sometimes be quite bossy. Because of my own sensitivity, it wasn’t always easy for me to be Donna’s friend.

But through trials and perseverance we learned to love and trust each other. I especially admired her integrity, her sense of beauty, and her single-mindedness.

In a talk Catherine gave on art, she talked about directing our neuroses and emotional problems into the creative process and the healing which this ultimately brings. Like all of us, Donna came to Madonna House with human weaknesses and wounding. I often thought that whatever inadequacies she felt came out in her desire for perfection, which was channeled into creating beauty.

Donna was fascinated with light, and the painter Vermeer was a major influence on her work. She had an incredible gift of seeing beauty in creation—even in very ordinary things—and a hunger to express this beauty in her art. And underneath her gift was the yearning and longing to know Beauty Himself.

One spring day as we were walking and gazing at the river, she commented on the richness of hues in the sky and river. Then she said, "Sometimes it is almost too painful to see so much beauty. It makes me cry." It was this ability to see which "passioned" Donna’s work.

In the late 1990s, Donna experienced a period of discouragement, a time when she felt stuck. She had been painting for years and had accumulated a body of work. Although she had had some exhibits, she felt her work wasn’t selling as it could and she began to examine her technique.

Although she disliked travel and being away from home and found the preparations for travel very difficult, she began to take some workshops in Europe and the United States. She was particular and chose these carefully.

The teacher who influenced her most was the American realist painter, Tony Ryder, whom she admired and with whom she took four residential workshops.

On hearing of her immanent death, Tony wrote to us, "I’m sorry to hear about Donna. She’s a very sensitive person, and a very fine painter—one of the best, hardest working, and most productive I have ever taught. From the artistic point of view, her being taken from us is a great loss. Likewise from a personal point of view. It was a privilege and a pleasure working with her."

During these last years, Donna improved her technique and gained a new freedom in her work. She also worked hard in contacting possible exhibiters and entering competitions. Many of her paintings were exhibited across the continent.

The Abbozzo Gallery in Oakville, Ontario, seriously began showing and selling her work, and in 2007 they mounted a solo exhibit in which every one of her paintings was sold.

Donna had also begun winning praise and awards, including, in 2006, third place in the prestigious International Portrait Arts Festival competition.

A friend of mine, a former curator/restorer at a major museum in Europe commented when he saw Donna’s recent work, "This is an accomplished artist."

Just ten days before Donna died, I had an hour’s visit with her in the Ottawa Hospital. She was still able to talk. Among other things, we talked about the vision of artists in Madonna House.

She said, "Perhaps this grain of wheat has to die for it to be fully realized." By "this grain" she meant herself. Donna loved Madonna House and she loved to paint. With tears in her eyes she added, "I still want so much to paint."

Donna’s journey to God was certainly interwoven with her love of beauty and painting. I have no doubt that her passion for painting was her passion to know God.

In the creative process, one enters into something of God’s own creativity. It is as if one enters his presence and loses oneself in the process. It is both a joy and a pang and also a deep prayer and surrender of the heart.

It is a mystery that God chose to take Donna home just as she was reaching her full potential as an artist. Her paintings spoke volumes of the beauty in the ordinary, of the hidden splendor of God in creation. I can’t help wondering if she had continued to paint how many more people would have been touched by the presence of Beauty in her art.

As for myself, I will sorely miss her presence and the richness she brought to my life.

[See some of Donna Surprenant’s paintings.]