About the Artist

Wistfully, I set up my easel in the peaceful small town park that is at the heart of so many of my childhood memories. I smile. Four of our five children are now playing in the park where I frolicked when I was a child. I use my palette knife to mix little mounds of red, yellow, blue, and white pigment powder with linseed oil until each has just the right consistency.

My nine-year-old and my niece are painting beside me. It doesn’t matter that I have been here for over an hour and have only now started mixing my paints. The girls are painting joyfully, and my heart is full.  The baby I am wearing on my back is no longer a good painting partner. Only months ago, he would happily sleep while I wore him and painted. Now that he’s getting bigger, he grabs the paints and paintbrushes, and we both end up with paint on us. (Truthfully, I always end up with paint on me even without a toddler around.) Thankfully, I use non-toxic pigments and sweet-smelling lavender essential oil instead of turpentine! 

Eventually, amidst all the inevitable interruptions—precious detours—my painting starts to resemble the bridge in front of me, a bridge I have crossed countless times throughout my life.  In fact, this very morning I was sweetly surprised to reconnect with one of my favorite former teachers on this bridge. 

I put the finishing touches on my bridge. The girls have long abandoned their paintings.  A sunset. A flower. The solar system. A dragon. Now they are on the playground with the others. My toddler son is happily playing in the dirt about two feet away from me. I place another stroke of paint on the canvas. The sun beams. Everything feels right.  My sweet little boy beams at me with his most charming, mischievous grin, then hurls a handful of dirt right at my painting. Sigh. It’s part of the art now.

While I slowly and carefully pick most of the tiny pieces of dirt, rock, and twigs out of my painting, I am reminded of all the other times children have unexpectedly adjusted my paintings and my perspective.  An unsolicited brushstroke here, a fingerprint there, a squirt of water or juice. Sometimes they’re easy to repair; other times, I leave them because they make the painting better. And just like these sweet, wonderfully wild little children, the unanticipated mistakes add richness, character, and even soul to my art.

Sometimes with my children, sometimes alone, and sometimes with friends, I wander and wonder throughout the beautiful creation around me. I soak in the beauty created by my favorite Artist. And sometimes I pull out paint and canvas and try to create a tiny reflection of the beauty that captures me. One of my cherished friends once described me as a “prairie fairy,” and the name captured some of my essence.

On my canvas, I try to capture bits of the light and dark around me, the essence of the things I see and even what I don’t see. Glimpses of moments, feelings, energy, light, love, loss. A loose brushstroke of paint here, a heavy dollop of paint there, and suddenly everything is right with the world, even when it isn’t.

Another treasured friend called me “mother of many” during one of the countless hours we spent oil painting in her basement while I was wearing a tiny newborn baby we had been fostering for only a few days. This name captured another bit of my essence as an adoptive and foster mother. It honored the children I have lost, the children who have come and gone, and the children who have stayed—the children who are all part of me and part of my art in so many different ways.

When I teach art to children, I try to help them see that the imperfections are part of the story, part of what makes art. It’s not supposed to be the same as a photograph. We have cameras for that. Paint what YOU see, feel, and experience. Sometimes you’ll get it right; sometimes you won’t. And sometimes the mistakes and imperfections will be your greatest work.

My art, my life, my children—it’s all a dance, and I say this as a former professional ballroom dancer. Sometimes I dance on the dance floor or in the kitchen with my husband; other times I dance through the fields or the forest. Sometimes I dance with my feet and my body to the rhythm of music and drums. And sometimes my paintbrush dances across the canvas.  More often than not, I am surprised by what appears.