Thoughts - where it all started

These photos were taken in March of some of the paintings I was working on then. I meant to publish this post back then, guess its been a minute since then. This past winter, I focused on a lot of animal paintings. I just felt like going back to where I started when I started oil painting. I’ve been thinking a lot about how this all started and when I started doing oil paintings, my professor told me to paint what I knew. I was young, inexperienced and didn’t know much other than growing up on a farm in Missouri with our lives focused on raising cattle. So I began to paint cows. When I was finishing up my Bachelors of Fine Arts degree, my studio show was mostly moody landscapes with cows. Then I went back to get a Masters of Fine Arts and my theme of going home needed more depth as I too was changing and had recently married my sweet husband, Ben, who was a psychologist and philosopher. Our communication was on a deeper level and so my paintings began to have more spiritual meanings to them, but the cows were still a major part, also adding sheep. My paintings were still focused on going home but adding more of a gateway into the light. Allowing peace, joy and light to fill our lives. A few years later Ben passed away as we were in an automobile accident and he didn’t survive. My world turned upside down in a sense, I persevered pretty well for raising two small children alone now. My paintings became a connection to Ben now that he had moved through the gate from this realm to another. There are many paintings that have symbols or special meaning to him. Things kind of fell apart for me when we moved to Idaho from Utah. We moved to help out my parents mostly, along with other reasons. My dad had Alzheimer’s and so we (me and my two sons) came to help out my mom. But moving to Idaho set me back with my art life. I became somewhat depressed also and struggled. It has only been the last while that I have been getting back my mojo with my art. My sons are grown and now it’s just me and Roo, my dog. I love our walks at the crack of dawn and some days at sunset. So much of my art has shifted from the animals now to skyscapes. The sky is where I look and feel loved, maybe because of Ben and my mom and dad are up there somewhere. The beauty I see fills me with hope and love from God. It is my inspiration to see the majesty that God displays in the wonderful, magnificent colors I see in the heavens. I am driven to try to paint those notes of inspiration for others.