Meet me here

Meet me here

An artwork collection

Hi! If you’re here, I want to thank you. Sharing a collection of artwork for the first time surfaces many emotions. Because artwork is so personal, I wanted to shine light on the background of this collection for anyone who enjoys knowing the backstory.

Sharing art is quite vulnerable. If my gram was here, she’d remind me that the point of art isn’t to please people - so I’m pushing past the fear of doing something new. Ironically, the start of this collection was because I craved something new. I am a new mom (can you still say new at one year in? It still feels new, so let’s go with yes). With a huge life change came a large shift in my capacity. As you likely know if you’re here, I have always loved creating. But with a whole new routine and a lot of days juggling, I desired painting to be something new for me - I needed it to be. My cousin gifted me a gouache set for Christmas and it felt like the nudge I needed to find the freedom to play again. Gouache is essentially opaque watercolor - painting with it feels similar to watercolor but has a totally different effect with the lack of transparency. Picking up a brush and a medium I hadn’t used in years, without a client project in mind, immediately brought a sense of play for me. I slowly formed the habit of returning to my studio during nap times to make time for this.

The very first piece I painted was “meet me here // joyful morn.” I had no direction but to put pigment on paper - to get something out of my head that I didn’t know how to otherwise express. I worked on this piece for a few weeks here and there and ended up happy with it. It wasn’t until weeks later that I realized on a walk with my daughter, it’s the very view I see every morning at the end of our street. The layered hills, the placement of the trees, everything was pretty much exact. I didn’t paint this from a photograph, I painted what felt right. Those morning walks are when I spend time in prayer, processing life and listening for what God has for me. I had no idea that this scene I was putting on paper was a literal representation of where God has met me daily throughout the last year.

As I painted more, I started to notice more. I would take pictures of the clouds every day or puddles after a rain storm. Slowly a foundation for this collection was formed by ordinary moments that I stopped to notice and later express in a new way. While it does feel intimidating to put something personal out there, I also feel compelled to share the beauty of the ordinary days where the Lord meets us. What I love is that this collection of pieces has depth of meaning - about change and savoring moments but also a lightness - a joyful play in color and expression. Those two things could easily sum up the last year of my life! My hope is that if a piece speaks to you here and you give it space in your home, that seeing it will pull you into the truth that you are seen and He is near. I hope it will invite you to celebrate ordinary moments and find some time for play.

Thank you, again.