Hi friends,

Well… it’s been a while…and I’ve debated sharing this because I like to keep my personal life personal but it has been so deeply intwined in who I am for so long now I don’t quite know how to do so but also don’t quite know how not to. I am perhaps on a journey of sorts figuring out who I am without it. It’s not fully my story and I believe in keeping that sacred and also not bleeding out over others not called to carry it with me, but I do think it’s important to acknowledge where I have been if it helps others feel less alone in their own journey with their own version of hard.

Over the past almost year and a half now I have quietly receded back both here and in real life in order to focus on my family in a chapter of walking through a valley together as I stepped into a season of caretaking. We are, unfortunately, well seasoned in stewarding this journey but just because we carried it well all these years doesn’t mean it wasn’t so very heavy for so very long. It has been deeply refining, soul crushing, and life changing; but also, I am realizing, deeply beautiful, special, and sacred. I am forever a different person now. There is no more me “before” and, quite frankly, I am still figuring this new me out.

A little over six months ago my beautiful mother, best friend, confidant … was eternally healed after a seven and a half year battle with stage four ovarian cancer. She was first diagnosed at a pivotal point in my late twenties and to have been able to help walk with her home, especially over that last year of that battle, is my life’s greatest honor and more special than any achievement or accolade I could dream of attaining. I learned how much hard I can carry. I learned how many times I can rise up for another go. And, through her, I learned the most important lessons… how to maintain hope and joy while suffering well.

It was a slow burn, years and years in the making, and yet still I found myself utterly shocked and speechless, lost in the ashes of what had become and what I had hoped could be. It was completely disorienting, I lost my due North. My mother painted my world with color. She was so vivacious and full of life and joy that everyone wore her favorite color of bright “lipstick” pink instead of black to her funeral… and afterwards, my world went quite grayscale. If I’m being honest it had been for some time prior leading up. The free fall was profound and I couldn’t bring myself to paint the colors I once loved … it had been over a year since I picked up a brush…and so, I took a sabbatical of sorts. Semi intentionally and semi by sheer force of the circumstances I was delt to lean into the sacredness of grief. To lament. To really sit with it because, well, I didn’t quite know what else to do, I didn’t have a choice, and I didn’t know how to pick up the pieces of my life’s pause and move forward yet. I knew the only way out was through. I’m still very much on that journey.

As I slowly re-emerge, I hope to continue to spread the glimmers of joy and hope I find in the beauty of nature and in all that I share and paint, in her memory, as she was my greatest cheerleader and inspiration and the one who opened my eyes to see and appreciate these things and instilled in me a deep love for art and design and most importantly, the art of loving others well.

The reality is that my art and this public pursuit of it was born during the middle of a pandemic, at another time of great personal pivot in my pursuits and priorities… and here we find ourselves again. The underlying hope has always been to share the glimmers and God winks I find throughout my day. My sources of inspiration. And to share my translation of that hope and beauty. I’m still learning, but this new version of me feels very content in having taken the long road to get there, even if not always by choice, and my hope in this new season is to share more of both here in words and in art.

At the beginning of this calendar year I finally was able to pick up my paintbrush again and am greatly looking forward to sharing with you all what I have been up to in the new year with a new small release of works to come soon. Slow and steady is the pace. This is an ode to “this is where I am right now.” And I’m going to post a little bit more here now too. A bit more behind the scenes thoughts and inspirations that go in to each collection, if you will.

Stay tuned.

Thank you to those who continued to collect my art month after month after month unknowingly giving me glimmers of hope when I absolutely needed it most. A lesson in you never ever know what someone is going through and how your actions have great impact.

Thanks for reading and thanks for being here.

XX,

Christina

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