Paint for the hardest days.

Bringing watercolor and creativity to people fighting cancer, in memory of Debbie Ouyang.

ViridianThe workEvery dollar becomes watercolor supplies on a cancer ward.UltramarineThe kitPaints, brushes, paper — what a patient actually receives.Quinacridone RoseDebbieThree fights with leukemia. One painter.Cadmium YellowThe fundA $100,000 endowment. The base is never spent.Dioxazine VioletHer colorThe color of her memorial. It keeps one swatch here.

Why we exist

Debbie Ouyang fought acute myeloid leukemia with everything she had — three times, she beat it. Through a transplant, through graft-versus-host disease, through infections and setbacks that would each have been the hardest thing in most lives, she kept getting back up.

Somewhere in the long hospital stays, she found watercolor. Treatment took so much out of her hands; painting put something back in them. What began as a way to fill the hours became a body of work — and a part of who she was.

This foundation puts art supplies into the hands of leukemia and transplant patients, starting on the wards where Debbie fought. A brush and paper won’t cure anything. But they give a person a place to go when the room won’t change and the news won’t come — and Debbie proved how far that can carry someone.

$100,000The baseinvested, never spent

Year 1

Year 2

Year 3

Year 4

…forever

≈ $4,000–5,000 of art supplies, every year, for good

Figure 1 — how a permanent fund works. The base pigment is never diluted; each year draws its wash from the earnings.

Help build the base

She couldn’t control what was happening to her body. The brush was hers.