CLINTON, Ill. – On a piece of porcelain in her left hand was a flower outlined in dark black lines. In her right hand was a brush, underneath it a palette of paints marching clockwise in a circle.

“See, I’m loading my brush now,” said Margie Sweazy of Clinton, dipping to where she’d been told the paint was located. Then she held up the brush with colored tip.

As she looked out through magnifying lenses she wore, Sweazy could explain what she was doing. But even with the magnification, even with the dark outlined image, she couldn’t see what had almost become second nature after 40 years.

“I can’t see the outline,” she said. “I’m lost.”

Calmly tapping the porcelain, her friend and former teacher Junette Seiler told Sweazy, “Come up here where my finger is. Now down toward your right hand.

“There. That’s good.”

“OK,” Sweazy said jokingly. “Did I pass?”

Sweazy, a porcelain painter and creator, began losing her sight about a dozen years ago. Glaucoma, surgeries, a hemorrhage in one eye and a deteriorating optic nerve have contributed to her sight loss.

“In the last six months, I’ve lost even more,” Sweazy said.

But then, smiling, she added, “I see light and dark. I’m thankful for that. I try to make the best of it.”

Seiler is among a group of artist friends who have been spending “Mondays with Margie” for about 25 years. Though they used to meet in Bloomington, for years they’ve gathered in Sweazy’s studio, which was damaged severely four years ago during a tornado in Clinton. It’s here that Sweazy painted and where she also fired ceramics and poured and fired porcelain.

As Sweazy’s eyesight left her, her friends did not.

Mondays with Margie will continue.

“We want her to know we’re still here,” Seiler said.

Now, with the help of a housekeeper and meal delivery, Sweazy cares for her husband, diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.

“I’m not brave,” Sweazy said. “I’m just trying to survive, and I want to be happy.”