Artist Nivia Gonzalez, whose work graced the covers of books by authors such as Sandra Cisneros and Alice Walker, recently died in June, 2017. She was 70.

Gonzalez, was known for her images of serene-looking, brown-skinned women painted in lush, velvety colors.

When Gonzalez was director of the Bexar County Jail Arts Program, she guided inmates in the creation of a mural that served as a backdrop for Pope John Paul II during his 1987 visit to San Antonio. The piece, which featured images of the Virgen de Guadalupe and six West Side churches, reportedly moved the pontiff to tears.

Gonzalez’s career came to an abrupt halt in 1997 when she was involved in a car accident that left her in a coma. The artist was out visiting friends on Mother’s Day when a flat tire caused her to lose control of her vehicle and slam into a guardrail. Disoriented, Gonzalez got out of the vehicle and was struck by a pickup on Loop 410. She suffered a traumatic brain injury, then a stroke that paralyzed the left side of her body, including her painting hand.

Gonzalez eventually regained mobility and speech, though she continued to struggle with both short-term and long-term memory loss. After about eight years, she also started painting again.

“You’ve heard of all the people like Jesse Treviño who learned to paint with their other hand. Not me. I just waited and waited until I got the feeling back in my left hand,” Gonzalez said in a 2007 interview with the Express-News. “Sometimes I have to hold my left hand — put my right hand under my left arm — so I can reach the canvas, but I just wanted to paint the way God made me to paint with my left hand.”

Before the accident, Gonzalez had depicted the women in her paintings with their eyes seemingly closed or averted. When she began painting again, however, she painted her subjects with their eyes open, gazing out of the canvas.

In earlier works “their eyes were downcast because they were thinking about stuff,” she said. “But now they’re so happy to be able to see — well, I’m so happy to be able to see, to be alive, that I’m looking at everything and anything.”