In 2022, I sold the boutique that I had owned for 11 years. All those years, I poured my heart and soul into it. I loved my store, loved my customers, loved my staff, but eventually, I burned out. Sam Keen says “burnout is nature’s way of telling you you’ve been going through the motions your soul has departed.” I took 2 years off after the sale and focused on resting my very tired soul and living in the moment. 

I began to pay attention to all the things I’d been too busy before to notice - the way the sky looks on a sunny day vs. the way it looks before a storm, the different hues of the Tennessee hillsides in all 4 seasons, all the stages of the many and varied flowers in my yard, and so many other cues God was giving me to take up my brushes and begin painting again. He is a God who knows no coincidence. It was time.

I try to paint every day. Some days, everything is a failure. But in art as in life, the best teacher is our last mistake. And if you want to be good at something, you have to be willing to be bad at it. So I keep painting. 

“That is how I look at it; to continue, to continue, that is what is necessary.”

― Vincent van Gogh