Finding my way back to my art

It’s been 40 years since I walked across the stage at Northern Arizona University and picked up my degree in graphic design. I sure was proud and so full of big plans for a creative life. Then life just kind of happened, the way it does.

I spent decades doing graphic design and running our printing business with my husband. There were always deadlines and clients and a business to keep going. It was really exciting owning our own business and I'm super grateful for all of it. Somewhere along the way my own art practice got set aside, not on purpose, it was just always sliding to the bottom of the to-do list, year after year. There just was never time.

We raised two beautiful daughters, and even with my art practice on hold I never stopped being creative. I was always drawn to doing things like gluing crystals onto their skating dresses, and taking them to the paint-your-own-pottery studio on rainy afternoons, and of course gardening with my mom while they played in the backyard. I was always trying to find ways to make our days more colorful.

I knew someday I'd go back to making art for myself. Someday is kind of a sneaky word, because the decades just slip by while you set it aside. So when I finally came back to making art, a little at a time, I was well into my fifties. I thought maybe I'd waited too long and lost what I learned back in college. So I signed up for evening classes at the community college, and I took online courses, I went to workshops, and then I took the big step of investing in myself and worked with an amazing art mentor.

A wonderful thing happened. That joyful excitement came right back x 1,000. All those years doing graphic design had really sharpened everything I already knew about color and composition and trusting my design sense. After all those years of setting it aside, it just came rushing back. I couldn't stop making art. My friends said they couldn't believe how prolific I was those first few months back to making art.

These days my mixed media collage paintings are bright and layered and happy. My love for gardening has moved into painting flowers instead of planting them, which is so much more fun for me. My love of birds and mountains and deer can enter my world in my studio whenever I want them to.

Now my work is in galleries and shows, and I'm able to share it with so many people, and it's really hard to believe. People I've never even met take my art home and tell me it makes their homes feel brighter and happier. These connections bring me so much joy.

I think back to my twenty-one-year-old self who was so excited to go out into the world and make art, and how I did what I could over the years. Forty years later it's all still there inside of me, coming out every day. It's really exciting to know that I will spend the rest of my life making my art and sharing it.

I guess what I'm saying is everything I've done over the past few decades has taught me so much, and it's all coming out in my art now.

Here's to finding your way back to whatever brings you joy. ❤️