This one still needs to be trimmed on the left hand side cuz kittens nibbled the corner. Hahaha!

I don’t know whether or not any of you have noticed but lately my art has been changing. I’m not as concerned about how ‘realistic’ a painting is anymore. I’m much more interested in expressing myself creatively and sharing the way I feel about life and beauty. I want my paintings to flow with emotion and color. I want to drink deeply of the beauty that surrounds me and then create my own unique beauty that hopefully others will drink deeply of. I want my paintings to have a life of there own, not just look ‘real’. I kind of feel like I’m on an artistic journey. That sounds all dramatic, I know, but I love journeys and I constantly want to better myself and that includes (but isn’t at all limited to) my art.

I call this one Spirit Hawk. I’ve always felt a special connection to hawks. Often when I’m out running hawks fly over me just ahead of me on the trail. I get to follow them for a minute and I love it. It almost feels like I’m flying with them. I wanted to portray that emotion in this painting.

I love fantasy. I like stories that capture the imagination and make us question the limits of our reality. After all, reality is only what we percieve it to be. Here is my latest fantasy painting. It’s called dance of the undine. An undine is a water fairy-like creature from European folklore.

My brother Chas wrote a song called healer and sent the music to me so I could write some lyrics for it. I love doing that and we enjoy the collaborative effort.

This song is basically about how a person is born into this world, pure and light and full of hope and wonder and then as time goes by they become a little jaded because of the sin and darkness that are here on Earth. They make some bad choices and are influenced by some of the wrong things and some of their beauty fades as well as the memories of spiritual things.  The great thing though is the Savior knew this would happen to all of us and He’s there to fix everything really. We can become clean and healed and beautiful again with His help. He loves us more than we can comprehend. Here are the words I wrote. (more…)

Last autumn my husband and I were enjoying a beautiful day in the warm sun and noticed a whole bunch of bumblebees dancing around on some flowers. Of course we had our cameras with us and this is one that he photographed. I decided yesterday to draw it and this is a close up of the finished piece.

I think that often we overlook some of the most beautiful of Heavenly Father’s creations simply because they are small. There’s so much to see on this great big planet that sometimes we forget to look down. A whole world of beauty exists just outside our normal range of vision.