Cathy Martin owns the Red Canvas in Apex where the walls are covered in portraits.
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"They look so alive. It's just in their eyes. I get so used to having them around," Cathy said.
But the portraits never stay in Cathy's studio. She paints them for just a fraction of families across the country who have lost a child to an opioid addiction.
"One lady wrote and said, 'I got to hold - with this portrait - I got to hold my child one more time,'" Cathy remembered.
It's a feeling of loss Cathy said she knows all too well. Her son, who battled a drug addiction, died in a car wreck 14 years ago.
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"For all of these years, I've thought how can I give back in his name? So this is what I've chosen to do," she said.
Cathy said she gets about 20 painting requests a week. In two years, she's painted about 100 portraits. Her goal is to paint a clearer picture of this epidemic and get families talking about it talking about it with one brush stroke at a time.
Cathy will have her work on display in Washington D.C. at the Fed Up rally in October.