Dr Shiromali (Shiro) Ekanayake supports motor neurone disease awareness through fundraising initiatives after seeing a colleague “perish” in front of her.
Photo by
Rechelle Zammit
Her art began as a way to breathe again. Now it helps others breathe too.
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By day, Dr Shiromali (Shiro) Ekanayake listens to some of the community’s most difficult stories. By night, the grief she absorbs catches up to her and that’s when she reaches for the pizza box.
Not for dinner. For painting.
Inspired by her patients’ stories, Shiro turns discarded cardboard into colour and possibility as the emotional weight of medicine is slowly, calmly released.
“Most of the time, no-one thinks about the person, the doctor,” Shiro said.
“Professionally, I’m a very proud, powerful woman, but I’m crying with you.”
Her journey to art began amid the pandemic, a fragile and unpredictable world where a family day in the backyard turned into the beginning of a self-taught joy and daily ritual.
“We didn’t know what was going on,” she said.
“I started drawing and it brought me so much happiness, I forgot what was happening around the world.
“I started doing art every day.”
With a mission to turn “someone’s trash into someone’s treasure”, Shiro remembers being attracted to the simple things people throw away.
And it is that very philosophy that mirrors the way she sees patients; imperfect, overlooked but full of beauty.
“Art is not perfect, darling,” she said.
“I realised you don’t need to be perfect.”
But the heart of Shiro’s work, and the reason it has grown beyond a private ritual, is motor neurone disease.
A cause that became deeply personal when her colleague, Karen Gladigau began experiencing subtle symptoms.
Her symptoms were overlooked after a foot drop was mistaken for a sprain, but within two months she was diagnosed with MND, and the decline was devastatingly quick.
“We saw how she was perishing right in front of us,” Shiro said.
“First, she came to work with a walking stick. Then crutches. A wheelchair. Then she didn’t come at all.”
Karen’s death two years ago shook the clinic and completely reshaped Shiro’s purpose.
Once a way to unwind after emotionally heavy days, painting quickly became a way to give back.
Each year, Shiro donates three large pieces of art to the Shepparton Women’s Health Clinic, where she works, with the works often fetching between $500 and $1000 for MND fundraisers.
She also donates pieces to raffles, exhibitions and community fundraisers, with her work displayed at Stellar Café, Obertor, Bill & Beat’s, Mooroopna Education and Activity Centre and local hospice exhibitions.
She gives many away for free and is simply grateful that someone wants them.
“Each time I give a piece of art, the amount of pleasure and contentment I get, you cannot label,” she said with a big smile.
Now two years on, more than $24,000 has been raised for MND initiatives through community efforts, supported by Shiro’s pieces.
Through her art, she sees Karen’s legacy being carried forward. Every raffle. Every exhibition. Every person who takes home a piece of her upcycled art.
As the doctor who listens, and the artist who lets herself feel, Shiro has found a way to honour a friend, support a cause and turn discarded cardboard into hope.
Dr Shiromali (Shiro) Ekanayake dedicated this piece of art to her late colleague Karen Gladigau, who lost her battle with motor neurone disease two years ago.
Photo by
Rechelle Zammit
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