When My Hands found Art
My journey into painting didn’t begin in an art studio. It began with burnout, a move to the ocean, and two unexpected words that quietly changed the direction of my life.
Before becoming a painter, I ran a commercial interior design firm for nearly fifteen years, working with large corporate clients. It was creative and rewarding work, but the pace was relentless. Over time the long hours and constant pressure caught up with me. My health deteriorated, surgeries followed, and eventually my body made it clear that the life I had been living was no longer sustainable.
So I made a bold change. I sold my business and moved to Del Mar, California.
I lived just a couple of blocks from the ocean. At night I could hear the waves from my bedroom window. My days became quiet and simple as I focused on restoring my health and figuring out what my life might look like next.
During that time I began noticing a strange sensation in the palms of my hands, almost as if they were quietly asking for something. I didn’t understand it then, but looking back I believe God was gently trying to get my attention.
One afternoon while lying in bed listening to the ocean, I heard two very clear words:
“Oil painting.”
I knew instantly that the voice was from God. It was different from my normal thoughts or intuition—calm, unmistakable, and incredibly specific.
The message was so clear that I got up, went straight to the computer, and searched for a local teacher.
I found a wonderful instructor in nearby La Jolla who taught from a charming cottage studio. During my very first class we began by mixing our palettes. The moment I picked up the palette knife and began blending the creamy oil paint, something inside me clicked.
Suddenly I understood that strange feeling I had been having in my palms.
It was as if God had placed the answer in my hands before my mind was ready to understand it.
My hands knew painting before my mind did
Painting was tactile, joyful, and deeply calming. When I painted, the busy chatter in my mind quieted. I became completely absorbed, and time seemed to disappear.
Over time something unexpected happened. As painting became part of my life, my health began improving. The calm, focus, and joy of creating helped restore balance in my body.
Painting didn’t just give me a new direction in life. In many ways, it helped bring me back to myself.
Along the way I realized something else. Our minds often tell us limiting stories about who we are or what is possible. Painting helped quiet that noise and reconnect me with something deeper—a reminder that we don’t have to believe every story our minds tell us.
Later, while attending a life coaching conference in Las Vegas, I suddenly had the thought, What am I doing here? This doesn’t feel right.
And then I heard that same unmistakable voice again:
“I already told you what to do.”
I went to that conference hoping to build a coaching business, but I came home realizing the thing I was meant to do was paint.
And I’ve been listening ever since.
Yet, the message was hard to ignore. The very day I heard the message, I hired an art teacher and began learning about art. I visited art museums, studied history and began to home my craft.
Mixing the paints on the first day of my first oil painting class, it was as if there was an instant recognition, like my body knew that this was my path to fully heal.
For the next year, I went to class, painted and allowed my art to fully restore my body and mind. I fell deeply in love with oil painting and the power to transform.
Today, my art is an expression of things that need to be healed in all of us.
My journey culminated into where I am today – an artist who can’t imagine doing anything else with my life. I paint art infused with energy to help you clear through the mental blocks that hold you back from your full expression in life.
Each piece is designed to inspire and create wonder. My art is designed to be shared in a place you’ll love and be reminded of whatever you personally need or who you are.
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Why Flowers?
As I continued painting, I explored different subjects searching for what felt most authentic. At first my designer brain naturally gravitated toward painting interiors, inspired by artists like Manet and Renoir. But that choice came from my head, not my heart.
Then my mom passed away.
During that time of grief, the only thing I wanted to paint was flowers.
Looking back, it makes perfect sense.
As a young girl I spent hours playing in fields of wildflowers near our home. Almost every day I would run back to the house carrying a small bouquet of daisies, buttercups, or Queen Anne’s Lace for my mother. It always brought a smile to her face.
Flowers became a quiet language between us.
As I grew older I continued sending her daisies for birthdays, holidays, and Mother’s Day. When she was diagnosed with cancer in 2010, I sent her daisies every other week as a reminder of my love.
So when she passed, it felt natural that the only thing I could paint was flowers.
In many ways it felt as if she was gently reminding me that I was on the right path.
A small piece of that connection still lives inside every painting I create.
Today when I paint flowers, I’m not simply painting petals and color. Flowers hold the emotions we all long to feel and share—joy, love, peace, hope, and healing.
My paintings are gentle reminders that we don’t have to believe every story our minds tell us—we can bloom anyway.
My hope is that when people encounter my work, they feel a small spark of joy—the kind that interrupts the mind’s negative loops and encourages the heart.
Flowers seem to understand something we often forget:
life continues to bloom, no matter what stories the mind may tell.
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