Finding Light Through Canvas: A Math Professor’s Journey of Recovery & Purpose Through Art

When Katie Montovan, a math professor at Bennington College in Bennington, Vermont, hopped on her electric scooter for her commute home last April, she had no idea that her life was about to change dramatically.

On the dirt road between her workplace and home, her scooter caught a rough edge. Despite wearing a helmet, she lost consciousness and was rushed to the hospital.

The fog of early recovery

The immediate aftermath was marked by confusion and orientation—and it still lingers. “I don’t remember leaving work,” Katie says. “I have an entire week that I don’t remember.” While in the hospital, doctors told Katie that she thought it was 10 years earlier than it actually was. She’d ask the same questions repeatedly. She also was constantly dizzy and fatigued.

“In those early days, I’d sleep 22 hours a day,” Katie recalls. “And when I was awake, my family was nervous about me being up and about. I wasn’t too steady on my feet.”

Katie’s colleagues figured out how to cover her classes so that she didn’t have to worry about work. A month after her accident, she went back to teaching but quickly found that there were new challenges. “I couldn’t go back into the classroom,” she says. “I couldn’t be with more than one student at a time, and I had to take breaks between meeting with those students.” Even writing student evaluations became a monumental task, requiring multiple extensions as she discovered that pushing herself led to days of recovery time. “When I pushed, I was out of commission for a week,” Katie says.

The challenges of finding care and support in a rural area

That summer, instead of doing research for her teaching role, Katie spent her months away from the classroom researching brain injury—what resources were out there, especially for someone living in rural Vermont. Accessing specialized care proved to be challenging. “Bennington is about an hour away from Albany, New York; Rutland, Vermont; and Pittsfield, Massachusetts, which are all smaller cities,” Katie explains. “Sure, I’m three hours away from Boston, but when you’re not able to drive more than 30 miles away from your home, it’s not an easy option to go there and get care.”

A fortunate connection with a physical therapist who had experience in concussion recovery provided some early support, helping first address her injured shoulder before working on her inner ear issues and other needs. Katie spent several hours a week in PT, counseling, and speech therapy trying to figure out how to move forward—which for her meant returning to the college to teach in the fall and keep up with her two elementary school-aged children.

An unexpected path to healing through art

It was through art that Katie found an unexpected path to healing. While she had explored ceramics and 3D sculpture during her college years alongside her mathematics studies, she had only recently returned to art, taking up painting in September 2023. A few months before her accident, she had discovered an online painting instructor and had immersed herself in classes.

After the brain injury, painting became one of the few activities her family would allow her to do. Initially, she could only paint for a few minutes at a time, and there were new challenges: it was tough to see details clearly, and her hand would jump unpredictably when trying to draw straight lines. Adapting to these limitations, Katie switched to larger canvases and less detailed subjects.

Finding progress through persistence

Gradually, Katie worked up from seven-minute painting sessions to longer periods. After three weeks, she noticed improvements: her hand had become steadier, and her ability to see detail returned. Today, she can paint for up to an hour, though she often sticks to shorter sessions. She explores various subjects through her art and has discovered unexpected joy in painting subjects like cars, which she never imagined would interest her. She’s also drawn to painting children, particularly scenes where their faces aren’t visible.

“I’m not painting for any other purpose other than my well-being, so I can just explore whatever’s fun,” she says.

In this way, painting isn’t an “official” part of Katie’s recovery, but it’s one of the most important parts. “I notice that if I make time to paint every day—and really make it a priority—it helps my brain.” She remembers having a conversation with her counselor and asking her about meditation, as she had heard that often helps with brain injuries. “I think you paint as your meditation,” her counselor said. “It’s my way of focusing my brain and giving myself that space.”

Giving back to the brain injury community

Another part of her recovery has been finding organizations like the Brain Injury Association of America (BIAA) and the Brain Injury Alliance of Vermont (BIAVT). She attends online support groups offered by BIAVT and says the BIAA resources have been instrumental in helping her move forward in her own brain injury journey. She’s also raising money for both organizations through the sale of some of her paintings.

Supporting BIAA and BIAVT is important to her because of the intersection of research, education, and advocacy that’s at the center of the group’s mission. “I’m especially wanting rural doctors to have more knowledge around brain injury—specifically, how to move people from the ER into getting the care they need,” Katie says. “I’ve always been pretty savvy in researching things, and I’m a strong self-advocate, but I can’t imagine this process if I weren’t—or if I didn’t have a family supporting me.”

This fall, Katie returned to teaching at Bennington College. Her new workload is about half of what it was prior to her brain injury, with plenty of flexibility built in. She’s learning to manage her energy levels and recognize her limits, she says.

Katie’s story illustrates not only the challenges of brain injury recovery, but the unexpected ways healing can manifest—and how a personal passion can become a bridge to helping others who are facing similar challenges.