Content warning; Brain Injury, PTSD & Depression

I am proud to share, my web site The Grounded Lion with you.

On this day I just started painting 30 May 2019 until 31 May 2020 I was on my own journey to search for peace and healing. I found it though the reigns of a paint brush and bumping into the tin man with a heart taped on him. The collection of 100 completed paintings in 365.5 days ending with a marathon of painting on the 29 and 30 May 2020. Almost 50 paintings were completed during the first three months of pandemic isolation.

In 2017, I was slowly being medically released from the military. In 2017, I was diagnosed with a Mild Traumatic Brain Injury from an impact to the left side of my head and face. I was hit on military duty by a baseball shattering the left side of my face. I have now recognized 10 known concussions, 2 minor concussions prior to service and 8 more serious during service within 10 years. I kept serving knowing something was wrong, but no one paid attention to brain injury in service as we do today. I received consistent treatment and carried on in a soldierly way as I worked to through the injury.

I hope to share on the severity of Concussion, TBI, PTSD, Depression, Anxiety, and secondary conditions. In civilian life and within the military. Currently painting has helped me complete my first year at Brock University in the Recreation and Leisure Therapeutic Program. I am pleased to share my journey and experience before and after the Invictus Games through pictures, stories, and healing through painting.

I never imagined I would be a painter after 22 years in the Canadian Infantry. I never imagined that I would be picked to be part of Team Canada for the Invictus Games 2018 in Sydney, Australia. I never imagined I would stand in front of the world with a broken body, injured mind and lift more than I had ever tried in life in one day. I had learned to lift with my heart and mind together for the first time since injury in 2004.

The painting started 7 months after the Invictus Games. I was over come with a purpose to put something on canvas as something during the games triggered my PTSD and opened the gates to creativity, healing, positivity, and regained belief in myself again. I figured I had 9 lives and had some stuff left in the basement in my heart. I let the passion come out in whatever form I could on canvas art and expressions of how I felt about Brain Injury and living with it.

The good thing was over 10 years of injury, I kept coming back injury after injury never giving in and wearing down to the point that I could not move or think. After my third accident in 2014, the healing restarted and as a system was changing and starting to recognize injuries and the effects, they have on soldier’s lives.


My mind goes somewhere while I paint, into my own space it is peaceful, safe place and what is painted stays painted. Now I can paint with variety, but it was not like that in the beginning. I was painting my traumas, my injuries, my feelings hoping one day that I would paint only what I have seen, observed, or taken a picture that makes me smile. They say a picture can tell a thousand words, but a painting with an engaged artist can catch so much more as far as emotions and life experience through passion and healing.

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So, I paint. Dean the Soldier, now a painter, by sport supported by family and friends that have helped me learn to heal, accept, and enjoy my life again. I hope that this inspires just one person to carry on with hope, decrease the feelings of isolation and even pickup a paint brush to find a sense of purpose.
We must start living and living in equality with mental health along with everything else in life. We must move forward with acceptance to everyone in the world. We must learn to thrive and charge through everything with passion.

“I love painting a door in my mind, on canvas in a wall and creating a sense of openness and healing through time”.
Thank you for checking out my web site with 100 paintings in the theme of my journey to recovery.

The Grounded Lion presents my first gallery called By The Reigns Of A Paint Brush which includes my Impact Series, Concussion Series, Trauma and Healing Series, Wildlife Series, Pandemic Series, Toilet Paper World Series, Go With the Flow Series, Learning to Learn After Brain Injury Series.