Drawing on love: after her hand was crushed, Elizabeth Patterson thought she'd never draw again. Then she fell for a special woman.

"I was standing in first grade doing a finger painting and I heard a man's voice say, 'You're going to be an artist.' I turned around, and there was nobody there," says color pencil fine artist Elizabeth Patterson. She started an art career with a bachelor in fine arts degree from Minneapolis College of Art and Design, then moved to Los Angeles, where she worked on Judy Chicago's famed "Dinner Party" project. To pay the bills Patterson took a job in a print shop, where a devastating accident altered her life. "My hand was pulled into a printing press," she says. "The whole hand was just crushed."

After two years of surgeries and physical therapy, Patterson chose to walk away from art for 13 years. But she always felt something was missing. "I was sick," she explains. "It was like acid was eating a hole inside of me."

That all changed when Patterson met her partner, the woman she lovingly calls "my Suzanne." They dated and got serious; on a trip to visit Patterson's father, Suzanne inquired about the art on his walls. Stunned to find out that it was her girlfriend's work, Suzanne bought her a drawing table as soon as the couple returned home.

Despite the injury, Patterson says her art is better now than before the accident. Her series "The Swimmers" features Suzanne and is a tribute to her "for the gift of helping me get back to art," Patterson says. "I'll love her forever and ever for that."

McCarthy has written for OC Weekly.