Improbable, beautiful, and afraid of nothing

Improbable, beautiful, and afraid of nothing

120 x 80 cm

Oil on linen

2025

I am free like a dove under the biggest sky.

I am a wild thing, a laughing for no reason and smiling up to the sun, a little warm animal.

Surviving cancer is a miracle, but it is also hard. It calls upon your truest sense of aliveness. You cannot help but answer.

This painting's title is inspired by a a verse from "Starlings in Winter" by Mary Oliver. Perfectly encapsulating my own human aliveness:

Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,

even in the leafless winter,

even in the ashy city.

I am thinking now

of grief, and of getting past it;

I feel my boots

trying to leave the ground,

I feel my heart

pumping hard. I want

to think again of dangerous and noble things.

I want to be light and frolicsome.

I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,

as though I had wings.

At the time of this writing, "Improbable, beautiful, and afraid of nothing" is available in my Italy Studio.

The Season of Heaven

The Season of Heaven

158 x 100 cm

Oil on linen

2024

A painting dedicated to the wide open expanse of time stretching out before me like a magic carpet.

I battled cancer in 2024. I wept and wept. I believed this world didn’t want me anymore, that all my light meant nothing. I asked over and over for some kind of meaning in what was happening to me. How could it just mean nothing? So much suffering couldn’t really be void of meaning. A tiny hidden part of me believed that I would find it. It would be there in the end. It would reveal itself to me.

And now here I am. On the other side of the darkest season. Somehow here. Like Nike, the winged goddess. And I feel it. It is there. It is heaven. In every little thing. In the cloud and wave and butterfly and sparrow. In my children. In my husband. In my own reflection. It has been revealed to me, the heaven in all things. And I smile. I smile and smile and hear music even when there is none.

And then I made this painting.

This is the Season of Heaven.

At the time of this writing, "Season of Heaven" is available in my Italy Studio.

The ecstasy

 The Ecstasy

36 x 36 inches

Oil on canvas

2024

I consider this painting, The Ecstasy", to be one of my masterpieces. Artists will tell you that they love all of their children the same. That’s true. It really is! I don’t offer any painting for sale that I would not love to live with every single day, that doesn’t necessarily require a little heartbreak when I send it off to a collector.

But “The Ecstasy” is different. I made this painting in my studio in the forest, in a season of beautiful creative flow, of ease, of innocence. As I looked at it when it was concluded, I couldn’t quite believe it was mine. The tumultuous sky was not foreboding, it was dancing, opening up to some kind of heaven.  The light was fiery, but also sweet and tender. The water was placid, peaceful under the revolutions above. It felt like a turning point for me and I didn’t know why.

This painting would go on to be on e cover of my solo exhibition invitation, set against an indigo background. It felt perfect. The centerpiece of newness and great heights for me.

Then I found out I had cancer, and everything, every single thing changed.

In the end, my show was canceled, as my year, and basically my entire life, unraveled. All the other beautiful work I made for the exhibition has sailed into the hands of collectors around the world. All except the centerpiece, this painting that has been saved and favorited by more collectors across every platform where I sell my work. It is still here, with me.

I am one of those people who believes (or at least I used to believe, it’s definitely harder now!) that everything means something. I wonder what this means?

"The Ecstasy" is a painting of power. Of rebirth. Of freedom.

I believe it is time for this one to fly.

I am ready to fly.

As of the date of this writing, "The Ecstasy" is available in my Colorado Studio.