Making Art, Living Hope: Life After Transplant with Dylan Mortimer

Transplant recipient and artist Dylan Mortimer has light skin, short brown hair, and a short brown beard. He is raising his left hand thoughtfully to his chin. Behind him is tiled artwork by him depicting pills and abstract antibody-like shapes in pink, white, red, blue, and green with glitter.

Help Hope Live client Ambassador Dylan Mortimer was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis at three months old in 1979 and received new lungs through transplants in 2017 and 2019. Dylan is a talented artist who has created public art installations in several cities including New York, Chicago, Baltimore, Kansas City, and Denver.

We asked Dylan to tell us about the role of art in his life, the meaning of hope, and the reality of life after transplant.

Day to day, I do several things to maintain my post-transplant wellbeing. That includes taking medication, managing my insulin levels, prevention for skin cancer, exercising, and pursuing regular labs and doctor visits.

It may be surprising, but many aspects of my day-to-day life are the same as they were pre-transplant.

However, I see everything through a different lens—a lens of joy, gratitude, and not taking things for granted.

Seated in a hospital bed wearing a white and blue hospital gown, transplant recipient and artist Dylan Mortimer has light skin, short brown hair, and a short brown beard.

Yes—I feel I am always evolving.

Transplant is such an intense reality that it takes a lot of time to process everything it means to get the gift of life. I’m not sure anyone can fully process the loaded reality of it all.

I believe I have grown in standing in the tension of holding joy and grief simultaneously.

I have grown in gratitude, the ability to communicate, and the ability to share my gratitude with others.

Transplant recipient and artist Dylan Mortimer has light skin, short brown hair, and a short brown beard and he wears a red cap and sneakers as he addresses a non-visible crowd in front of one of his pieces of art hanging in a gallery or museum setting. The work of art is taller and longer than Dylan's height and features a scene of ambulances and snaking, flora-like ventricle and artery shapes that bring a set of lungs to mind. His works often feature glitter.

I’m excited about many art projects this year will bring—particularly a collaboration with a transplant clinic in South Africa to “bring heart to the hospital” and, hopefully, finally releasing a book I wrote at the time of my transplant.

Transplant recipient and artist Dylan Mortimer has light skin, short brown hair, and a short brown beard and he wears a baseball cap and black clothing as he hands a piece of framed artwork he made to the buyer, who has light skin, glasses, and a short-sleeved navy button-up shirt. They are in the buyer's office. The artwork is about half Dylan's height in length and and features a black background and a set of ribs in white with ventricle shapes blooming, lung-like, from either side.

It is more true for me every day that my art celebrates victory over my diagnoses, catalogues my journey, and transforms difficulty into joy and hope.

Art has been essential to my survival and to any thriving that I’ve done.

Transplant recipient and artist Dylan Mortimer has light skin and short brown hair and wears jeans and a white pocketed jacket as he sits on a paint can with a spotlight on him in front of one of his artworks. The work appears to be about as tall and wide as Dylan is tall. It features red and pink tree-like but anatomical structures blooming from a 'forest floor' of jewel-toned and glitter-accented amoeba-like shapes.

Art provides a realm to process the weight of everything I have experienced, and to celebrate, thrive, and explore.

I believe art is accessible to everyone, not just a select few, but we all have different walls to scale to get there. I see people creating and making art almost everywhere in their own ways.

An artwork by Dylan Mortimer hanging on a wall in a white frame with a gallery or museum placard beside it, not legible. The piece of art features an IV cart in front of a blooming, mandala-like display reminiscent of both anatomy and nature. There is a red globule in the center surrounded by a turquoise and glittering gold circular halo. Behind that, a deep blue fading to black near the bottom of the canvas offsets silvery glitter swirls and pink protuberances that look like arteries or ventricles.

For Help Hope Live fundraising clients like me, art can also be a way to incorporate more of who you are into your fundraising efforts.

You can help people to see your vision for the future—one that goes beyond survival—and it’s a critical and inspiring message to be able to deliver.

So much of what we go through is beyond words. Art brings some understanding but more feeling—a sense of spirit that casts a situation in a different light. It’s a way for us to enter into complexity, nuance, and difficulty.

Transplant recipient and artist Dylan Mortimer has light skin and short brown hair and wears a navy shirt and a cream cargo jacket as he stands in front of an assortment of small framed artworks by him, featuring jewel toned colors and glitter.

I heard about Help Hope Live through John McMahon, father of Annie McMahon. I wish I had heard about it sooner!

I chose Help Hope Live because of the overall mission and vision of the nonprofit and the tax deductibility [for donors].

I’ve had a greater experience in every facet with Help Hope Live than I’ve ever had on another fundraising platform.

I believe in the mission, and I genuinely appreciate the Help Hope Live team. I asked to become a Help Hope Live Ambassador as a small way to give back to the many people who have supported me.

Transplant recipient and artist Dylan Mortimer has light skin, short brown hair, and a short brown beard and he wears a red baseball cap and a vivid deep cerulean jacket as he stands in a gallery or museum setting in front of two of his artworks. The artworks are about three-quarters of Dylan's height in size, and they feature blooming bouquets of surprisingly anatomical designs like neural pathways in vivid jewel tones of pink, red, orange, yellow, and blue.

In addition to sharing Help Hope Live with others who may need fundraising assistance, I have also been able to contribute to initiatives like the Hope Talk on Hope, Strength, and Living Forward.

Sharing our stories is one of the most powerful things we can do.

Many of our stories relay the seemingly impossible. They transcend the ordinary and the expected and help us look past the hopeless outlook we can get stuck in when we turn to science and statistics alone.

Transplant recipient and artist Dylan Mortimer has light skin, short brown hair, and a short brown beard as he stands in front of a gorgeous New Zealand lake and mountain landscape with three members of his family. From left, there is a young woman with light skin, brown hair past her shoulders, and a navy baseball cap, then a teen with light skin, short curly brown hair, and a cream sweatshirt with the word PRAYER visible in navy print, then a younger boy with short straight brown hair and light skin, then Dylan wearing an AUSTRALIA printed hoodie.

Nearly everyone has wrestled with hopelessness.

The question is, where do we find hope beyond ourselves? For me, hope is deeply rooted in a spiritual understanding that we are given far more than we could ever earn—just like we are with the gift of life, or even the gift of each breath we take.

We can do our parts and work as hard as we can, but in my case, none of that was going to save me. I needed a donor to live. The truth is that whether we are transplant candidates or not, we all need a donor.

We all need help beyond what we can do for ourselves.

Dylan Mortimer alongside a photo of his organ donor, Spencer. Dylan has light skin, short shaved brown hair, light eyes, and an oxygen tube as he wears a hospital gown in a hospital setting and grins broadly - but his eyes and eyebrows show an overwhelming emotional burden in addition to his joy. The photo of Spencer shows a smiling young man with light skin, short brown hair, and a brown goatee holding an infant dressed in vivid fall clothing.

Photo: Dylan, right, and organ donor Spencer.

Scriptures speak of God as our hope. Aid coming from the outside and the unexpected. I have prayed for hope for myself and others so many times, praying that hope would make a way when there seems to be no way.