Painting gives artist Elizabeth Stanley's life meaning. So, after a brush with a deadly infection left her without her hands, she faced an existential crisis.
Ms Stanley's children's books are filled with detailed and realistic illustrations.
In her 1994 book The Deliverance of Dancing Bears, a painting shows a bear's fur glowing in dusky light while an older man crouches to pet the animal.
Graphic content warning: Images in this story may distress some readers.
Ms Stanley said she wanted to make the man seem lovely and caring.
"I've really played up the purples and dreamy colours," she said. "I've tried to create a mood through colour."
Her life as an artist almost ended eight years ago when she contracted meningococcal while on holiday.
An artist's ordeal
Ms Stanley remembers feeling run down while on a holiday to Mandurah in Western Australia. She went to bed, only to wake up shaking uncontrollably.
She was taken to hospital and placed in an induced coma for 10 days, during which her organs began to shut down.
When she woke from the coma, her arms and legs began to turn black from a condition called sepsis.
Doctors partially amputated her left hand and completely amputated her right hand and both feet.
"I was covered in necrotic flesh, and it was revolting," Ms Stanley said.
"I always felt like it was an out-of-body experience."
Ms Stanley feels lucky to have survived the disease but was left with an existential question about her identity.
"As you can imagine, for an artist, having your dominant hand amputated meant rethinking everything I was going to do in relation to art," she said.
But despite losing her painting hand, she refused to put down the brush.
Learning to paint again
For a year, Ms Stanley was in and out of hospital for her treatment and rehabilitation.
She had to learn to become left-handed, including picking up things, opening door handles and putting on clothes.
"You have to start training your brain straight away to be left-handed in everything," Ms Stanley said.
It was during this time she also learned to use a paintbrush upside down with her partially amputated left hand.
She began painting portraits of fellow patients and changed her previously detailed style to a more free and expressive one.
Ms Stanley said she felt uncomfortable compromising her style for a long time but learned to enjoy it.
"I was really worried about that because I realised I couldn't possibly paint in the way I had in the past," Ms Stanley said.
"A lot of friends said yes, but it's going to loosen you up. It's going to give you more expressionist kinds of tendencies."
She now prefers to use her iPad to paint, using the program Procreate.
"I don't need paper and erasers and pastels and things that are hard for me to grip," Ms Stanley said.
A new lease on life
Now 76 years old, Ms Stanley remembers looking forward to retirement and having more time to do art when she went on that fateful holiday.
She's had no trouble filling that time, completing two memoirs. She's also sailing with a group that specialises in helping people living with disabilities.
She's also continued to make art. She paints portraits of people's dogs on an iPad as part of a fundraiser for the RSPCA.
Although her style and medium might have changed, the portraits glow with the same colours in her children's book illustrations.
"Some people, including my husband, have said: 'Why don't you just settle down and read a book quietly each day?'" she said.
"I know that art is my purpose in life.
"I'll always be an artist."