Happy Monday Art Fans!

I’m back in the studio today after a much needed week off. My husband and I spend a few days out in Seattle touring breweries and enjoying the Great Pumpkin Beer Festival.

I love going out to the Pacific Northwest, it’s where I spent much of my early years and it’s a place that I enjoy going back to as often as I can. For me the trip was creatively rejuvinating. Being land locked I often forget how energizing being near the ocean can be.

We spent quite a bit of time walking around Seattle, especially along the coast but also through areas I hadn’t been back to since I was very young. It brought me back to some of my earliest sources of inspiration and drive to make art. One of my earliest memories is of my mother, who died when I was very young, scolding me for drawing on the hallway walls. What she did after she finished being very upset, and as a kind of a way to mend things, she set me down to tell me that she saw me going up to be an artist, but please, please, PLEASE no more crayons on the walls. She passed away not long after that, and in many ways her words became almost a call to action. Everything I’ve done for as long as I can remember has been to bring her vision to life.

And here I am. Ready to get back to work, back to creating, back to hosting painting events and teaching students.