Tina DeGeorge proved that art can happen in happy places.

Her Boynton Beach condo was filled with pleasant portraits of puppies and flowers and children playing in the distance, the body of work of a naturalist, a mother, a grandmother, an 86-year-old woman who raised six well-adjusted children in New York City — five in the span of six years.

But there, over her piano, a canvas wept: A depiction of firefighters struggling at Ground Zero after the 9-11 attacks were her outlet when, like so many, she struggled to make sense of the violence. Next to it were other scenes she painted in dark blues and grays and blacks, a departure from her other work.

She made such a powerful statement with this art that copies of her paintings eventually would hang in then-New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s office.

Today, there is an unfinished painting on her easel in her son Craig Minervini’s home in Weston, while she lies in the next room in too much physical pain to exact her emotional one on the canvas. DeGeorge, whose paintings I wrote about in 2011, started her last one in December, shortly after being diagnosed with incurable Stage 4 lung cancer. The disease has spread to her lymph nodes, to her liver, to her bones and beyond. She is now under hospice care.

In the months after she shared her story, she was invited to show her work in a Stuart gallery. She reconnected with friends all over the country. She wrote to the office of the mayor of New York and bequeathed her originals to be displayed in the as-yet-unfinished second tower of the new World Trade Center.

And when a New York City firefighter who fought the burning embers at Ground Zero that morning visited her home and wept at her art, she took the canvas off the wall and gave it to him. He and his wife returned to give her flowers.

DeGeorge had no formal training as an artist. She once owned a comedy club, worked as a secretary and raised her children to be successes. (Craig is a Miami Marlins broadcaster, another son, Doug, is a comedian.)

She says she will not finish her final painting, but her art will live on: She has asked her grandson Michael, an artist himself, to complete the work through his eyes when she’s gone.