Ms Mulherin-Ogden fell in love with painting in visual arts class at high school, using it as a way of expressing her feelings.

"I paint whatever I find that has meaning to me," she said.

She paints the world she sees: after the fires her works was inspired by recovery from the pain and trauma of disaster. Her workbook is full of natural scenery; beaches, flowers and turtles.

Her bushfire-inspired work 'A New Beginning' was included in the World Vision 2022 calendar for the month of July.

Then all of a sudden her painting was forced to stop. She couldn't paint what she saw.

At age 17, she was diagnosed with Idiopathic intracranial hypertension and lost three quarters of her vision. She retained only her central vision, which is blurry without glasses.

She spent two years in and out of hospital, commuting to Canberra fortnightly for medical appointments and surgeries.

READ MORE:

She tried to continue her art to fill the time and numb the pain.

It wasn't always easy. It was a dark time, both literally as she learnt to re-see, and metaphorically, as she struggled with coming to terms with her new reality.

"I felt really defeated after losing my sight because all of my goals were vision based, or I needed a lot more vision than I had," she said.

She lost her ability to paint.

"I felt lost not being able to paint," she said. "I didn't have that outlet to express myself. I was bottling up emotions and I wasn't able to release them in my art."

One in 100,000 people have the condition, and yet Ms Mulherin-Ogden's caseworker at Moruya-based disability support service RoundSquared also has the same condition. Caseworker Krystal Tritton has been a fantastic mentor and friend for Ms Mulherin-Ogden as they overcome the same struggles.

Ms Mulherin-Ogden had to relearn how to carry out basic tasks without sight, which was a difficult and tiring process.

"Then I started getting used to it and I started getting good at doing the different things I needed to do and it opened up a whole world of new things," she said.

"I could metaphorically finally see again."

Ms Mulherin-Ogden found new ways to do the art she loved.

During her recovery period - after her fourth brain surgery in the space of two months - even trying to focus on seeing objects was exhausting. Ms Mulherin-Ogden completed a rainbow mosaic of a snake purely by touch, relying on others to tell her the colour of the pieces she was holding.

"I just went by touch," she said. "It was all I could do."

The work, which now hangs on the wall of RoundSquared's offices won first place at the 2022 Eurobodalla Agricultural Show.

Ms Mulherin-Ogden was shocked by the win, but it gave her confidence to keep creating art.

Eventually she picked up the brushes to paint again.

"It was amazing to paint again," she said.

To make focusing easier, she avoids focusing on the whole piece she is working on by breaking an artwork down into grids - working on 10 centimetre by 10 centimetre squares at a time, gradually completing an entire piece.

Ms Mulherin-Ogden's life experience was the inspiration for her work 'Leading with Vision', which won the 2021 Women with Disabilities Australia lead art prize in the under 18s category.

The artwork consists of three pieces, each an outline of a female, and traces Ms Mulherin-Ogden's struggle with her diagnosis. The first is colourful and bright, the second is dull greys and black, the colour returns in the third portrait, but the background remains dark.

"I was fully colourful and bright before I started losing my sight," Ms Mulherin-Ogden said.

"In the second one there's a lot less color. As I was finding out I was losing my sight I was losing heart for what I wanted to do. It was so foreign to me and I had to deal with the idea - Oh my god, I'm losing my sight.

"The third one has more color back, but it's still got the dark outside as I lost my sight. I'm still sick and it won't ever change, but I'm learning how to cope with it and how to do things differently. I'm learning to not hate the condition but to realise I've got new opportunities.

"I can see things differently."

Ms Mulherin-Ogden is now incorporating physical elements into her artworks - playing with texture and with different materials. She hopes other visually-impaired people can enjoy her works even if they cannot see them.

"If I do eventually lose all my sight, I can still interact with my paintings," she said.

Barely more than 12 months out of surgeries, Ms Mulherin-Ogden is pursuing a career in graphic design.

She is able to do the work on her iPad, zooming in to see the details. She wishes she could zoom in on other art mediums, and sometimes catches herself pinching and swiping paper, hoping to zoom in.

She wants to own her own graphic design business. It's a lofty goal, but it's a vision she is set on.