Ailing Artist's Dilemma: Her Art or Health

Alison Silva's paintings were always bright and cheery and whimsical.

But in 2006, things turned dark for Alison when her health started to fail.

"I was having kind of blackouts and headaches and dizziness," she told CBS News correspondent Richard Schlesinger.

She ended up in the hospital and it was there that Alison - whose work was all about color - came face to face with a stark, black and white MRI. It showed a dangerous tangle of blood vessels that had leaked into her brain.

Doctors wanted to operate but Alison wanted to wait. She didn't paint for awhile. When she started again, the results were surprising.

"Just something new happened," she said. "It was just this new spark. You know, there's a lot of energy."

Its intensity surprised her.

"A lot of my other stuff was very simple," Alison said. "Like I just felt I became obsessed with filling up the whole canvas, trying to say all these things I'm going through and feeling."

Her neurologist, Dr. Steven Karceski, has seen this before and has developed a theory about what has unleashed Alison's creativity. The tangle of vessels damaged the part of Alison's brain that controls logic and can promote over-thinking. But it left the creative side untouched.

"Taking away some of that over-thinking allowed the creativity to come through even a little bit more," Dr. Karceski said.

Researchers believe Van Gogh and Michelangelo could have had problems like Alison's. Nothing could be done for them and the longer Alison waits for treatment the greater the risk of seizures or stroke or maybe death.

"You feel like there's this alien living in your head and you don't know when it's gonna tick or when it's gonna do its thing," Alison said.

Surgery could cure her but it could also destroy her ability to create her newfound art.

"I'm just not ready to take that chance," she said.

Her new style has earned her more commissions and higher prices. Still she knows she'll have to get treatment at some point.

"All I know is I'm comfortable with the place I'm in and when I'm ready I'm gonna do it," she said.

For now she'll live with the risk and continue painting, giving new meaning to that old expression: sometimes you have to suffer for art.