Springtime Sentiments

Happy April! Spring is a good time for a fresh start as something in our spirits seems to awaken along with the whole earth reawakening. My fresh spring start is to try to do better at balancing my hours at the easel with keeping in touch with you all!

I feel compelled to share a bit of a personal journey story with you this month. The above painting is one I created using a combination of photos I had taken from a hike in April of 2020 at Coopers Rock State Forest and photos other people had taken of me painting. Why did I combine those instead of just painting the pretty scene? Well, when I went for that hike, I had just returned home from being with my youngest sister for 3 weeks as she passed away from metastatic breast cancer and was sadder than my heart could bear. It was difficult to get back into anything, let alone my painting. When I'm down, the thing that I most want to do is go to nature and be alone with God. So, I took a day and went to the forest. It's a sort of remarkable story how I came upon this waterfall that was tucked way