From an early age I loved any opportunity to create. I remember very few gifts I received as a child, but one that stands out was a gift certificate for art classes my parents gave me for Christmas in the first grade. They believed in me and wanted to develop my talent just as much as I did.

In Jr high and high school I signed up for art classes when schedules would permit. However, when I began my undergraduate degree in the health sciences, there wasn't space in my full schedule to add more art credits.

Fast forwarding to a few years ago, I scrounged up a used portable easel, replaced my dried-up tubes, and quickly bought a few brushes to join some close friends in a multi-day plein air oil study course. Thankfully, my artistic pilot light stayed lit while on hold all those years, and I could dial it up once more.

Today, I am proudly a mother of five first. Where few moments of calmness to paint exist while attending to young ones, I notice that during the mundane housework, my mind constantly works in the background, resolving the paint, color, and compose on the canvas in progress that sits on my easel in the art den. I love it when a "freeish" moment opens, and I can quickly devote even 45 minutes during baby naps and between carpools to put the brush on the canvas and catch up to what my mind has been working through.