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I decided over a year ago that I was going to submit to my local gallery again. I had done what I thought was a solid submission years ago, only to realize I had no concept of what submitting actually meant. I thought of it as a job interview where I show what I could do and then they would help put a show together with me. And maybe that is a possibility thru my research I have found it is much more an opportunity to show who you are and what you are already doing. I am prep

Being the Christmas season, I randomly got the idea to create cookbooks for gifts this year. I have a collection of my grandmothers old cookbooks that i plan on putting a dozen or so together into one place. One of the places I am pulling from is a church book from 2002, titled "Treasures from Heaven", a collection of recipes from St. Peter the Apostle. What this means I do not actually know but I assume they are just recipes submitted by the congregation, in it I have found

I am currently working on a piece to submit for the ASPCA Pet Portrait Contest. In all honesty, I’m probably one of the people they’re talking about when they say AI can become addictive. I speak with ChatGPT about nearly everything. It was through these conversations that I was introduced to the idea that the challenge of our lives may not only be to expand the mind, but to participate in society without losing that expansion. With this understanding, I’ve made a commitment

Vulnerability does not come naturally to me. At least, my understanding of it didn’t. I’ve come to believe that true vulnerability is being fully honest with yourself. I’ve never had a problem speaking truth out loud, so I thought I was vulnerable. But it wasn’t until I took the time to face myself that I realized how much scarier it is to have brutal honesty with yourself—and even more so when that honesty is kind. I had to practice many forms of self-love, shifting from tou

Language is important. It helps our society function and makes our lives easier, but symbols, I believe, are vastly more powerful. They are universal. You could place thirty people who speak different languages in a room, and every one of them would recognize that a smiley face is good and a sad face is bad. We carry on full conversations using emojis across the world. Long before written language, symbols shaped how humans understood the universe. At the same time, symbols a

I used to think healing through art meant focusing on subject matter—putting your emotions into a piece and depicting how you feel in a given moment. And while that can certainly be true, I’ve come to understand it in a different way. I check the clock and it’s 4 a.m. The world is dark and quiet. My dogs and my husband are sound asleep, and the only sound is my pencil scraping against the paper. I blink and it’s 5:00, and suddenly it hits me: for an entire hour, I had no thou

I began drawing pet portraits about 14 years ago. I was 23 years old and just needed a cheap birthday present. I kept this as a “side hustle”, doing maybe five or six drawings a year for mostly trade. This very quickly began an emotional roller coaster I did not get off of until recently. In hindsight, I was experiencing textbook fear of success. Every drawing I did sparked another request, and every request sparked a tiny part of me that would tell itself, “You could do this

I have felt simply different from the very first moment I became aware I was alive. And the one recurring comment that has fueled this feeling—sometimes gently, sometimes explosively —is, “you’re an old soul.” The first time I remember hearing it, I was maybe seven or eight years old. And somehow, decades later, strangers still say it to me in grocery store lines or on random Tuesdays. It sent me on a 37-year National Treasure–style scavenger hunt for answers. 1. What does th

Being my own worst enemy has been— not even a theme— but a central character in my life. It always seemed like everyone else had figured something out that I somehow missed. That feeling of walking into a room right after everyone was talking about you, that quiet awkwardness you can feel in your inner ear? Yes. That is how every room felt (and to some extent still feels). And when someone feels that level of isolation, there’s nothing to do but self-evaluate. I’ve been told