OK, this is pretty cool...

In the 5 1/2 years that I've been running this website, I've received several honors and accolades, ranging from interviews and profile pieces, to being a finalist in the National Institute for Health Care Management (NIHCM) digital media awards, to even having my work included in not one, but two comic books.

Today I'm honored and humbled to note that I've now had...my portrait painted for an art exhibit. No, seriously.

I wrote about Theresa BrownGold a few months ago:

Art As Social Inquiry combines art and advocacy as a way to engage audiences. Theresa BrownGold is the painter/writer/performance artist behind Art As Social Inquiry.

"I have often wondered why so many good people have such different and divisive opinions. Art As Social Inquiry asks the questions: Are we our opinions? Or are we something more? Then what? What is beyond the emotional charge of our opinions? And how do we get there?"

Art As Social Inquiry — an artist-at-work painting portraits of real people whose lives embody the social issues of the day, issues like access to healthcare, immigration, how we die. The artist also uses songwriting and performance art, two more art-making tools, to help us see ourselves in the bigger world, and the opinions we cling to.

...This healthcare painting series is dedicated to a remarkable social activist, and exceptional human being, Athena Smith Ford. At her young age, she mentored so many of us in the art of genuine listening and informed responding. Rest in peace, my dear friend. Pennsylvania Health Access Network, a consumer advocacy group Athena helped launch, set up a Memorial Fund in her name. The fund will support the work of grassroots advocates in PA who are fighting to expand and protect access to healthcare. Donations can be made here. Thank you.

At the time, BrownGold had asked to use an old Twitter thread of mine to accompany one of her other portraits.

More recently, she asked to paint my portrait, and to use it, along with several of my blog posts over the years, to create an original piece as part of her Healthcare in the United States series. I agreed, and today she posted it as part of her portfolio.