Choose a mini painting.
You deserve something as unique as you are. When you buy a mini painting, there’s only one like it in the whole world, and the artist made every mark and brushstroke with their own hands.
If you want to elevate your space on a budget, you can do that with a mini painting. Fine art, especially a framed, original painting, no matter the size—says I care about myself, and I put effort into this space.
A smaller piece is great on a gallery wall with other art you love. You can also use it to make a statement in places like a bathroom, a kitchen nook, over your desk or by the bedside.
If you care about creativity and want to support an independent artist but don’t have the budget for a large painting, a mini painting is a great way to help an artist continue their work and get something you love without exploding your budget.
If you want art that reminds you to embrace the moment and brings the colors and feeling of the changing seasons in Southwest France right to you, then I have the perfect series of mini paintings coming up!
The new series releases next month. Sign up for my newsletter and be first to get one of nine paintings inspired by wildflower season in the fields of Périgord Noir.
How does abstract art tell a story? It’s…abstract.
Here’s the truth: The painting holds the story. You tell the story.
All my paintings start with these four things: a color, a feeling, a place, and a season.
In the process of making the painting, the story reveals itself.
When I’m creating an original series, I find it in the natural play of getting up close with nature and watching the environment change around me. There’s always an echo in my own life.
The winding down of autumn and the inner resistance to letting go when things fade—be it the colors of the trees, the year’s final butterflies, or the conditions of our own lives. The arrival of spring filled with bright colors and possibility echoes the joyous hope and fear of welcoming new changes.
When I work with a client, we find that story together.
For example, collaborating with the owners of Le Petit Léon to create a series for the 2024 season, we started with the colors of the Vézère Valley and its gastronomic heroes: walnuts, truffle mushrooms, and red wine. From there, we explored the values underlying their work. Respect for nature’s seasons, care for the history and people here, and a drive to contribute in a new and artful way. I created paintings inspired by the colors of the river flooding in midwinter, inspired by how water nurtures the land, its people, and its culture, and has for countless generations in this historic valley. You can read the full story of our collaboration here.
Whether you watch the story unfold in reels of me painting around the countryside on Instagram and read about it here when I create original paintings or you work with me directly to create something one-of-a-kind for you, the key is that abstract art isn’t just something beautiful to hang on your wall—though it’s that too—it’s an experience.
The painting itself is a portal to that experience that you can step through any time just by looking at it. Whenever you need inspiration or want to share your inspiration, you know where to turn. A painting expresses the journey of its creation with as much vibrancy as the day it was created.
All the elements are there, and the story is yours to tell.
Rather than creating this most recent painting series on my own, I worked with the wonderful owners of Restaurant Le Petit Léon to create this work together.
I’m very excited to share this story with you and give you direct insight into what collaborating with me is like.
The key to commissioned art is that it's a dialogue between my vision as an artist and your story as the collector.
In this case, Nick shared his process for creating a dish with me, and Sina shared her visual inspiration for the restaurant. We talked about respect for the natural environment and the changing seasons. Specific things that came up included the familiar ochre stone of the village, regional products like walnuts and truffles, and of course the local wines.
I used those ideas as guidelines and then looked for inspiration in nature and in the village of Saint Léon where the restaurant is located. I spent time outside sketching and taking photographs, looking for things that told the story I heard from them. Sina also sent me a handful of photos that reflected their inspiration and some of their favorite colors.
The main themes became apparent: the river, the water cycle, the long history of humans here in the valley and the art, agriculture, and cuisine we’ve created and continue to evolve.
Blue and white for the water cycles and warm browns with hints of ochre and mauve to represent the river during flood season, the soil, and many local ingredients. Then, I created some small works on canvas to test out ideas and shared them with Nick and Sina.
We agreed the direction was clear, and I jumped into creating the eight paintings in the series. When the paintings were well underway, we checked in to share and discuss the process and confirm the frame choice. After completion, we reviewed the series, installed it, and celebrated a job well done.
Commissioning art brings you into the creative process and gets you unique, quality artwork for your space.
If you’re looking for a way to add value to your property or business and make it look great, commissioned art is the perfect choice.
If you’re excited about working directly with a fine artist, this is your chance to do it.
If you’re passionate about the beauty and culture of the Southwest and you want paintings that will reflect your appreciation for this incredible region, you can get started now.
Sometimes people ask me how I ever gave up living in coastal Southern California for middle-of-nowhere southwest France.
Don’t underestimate this place just because you may not have heard of it. It’s just as beautiful in its own way.
So here are the three reasons that I love living in Dordogne and wouldn’t want to be anywhere else:
Mossy forests, ancient rivers, and flower-filled meadows are all within steps of my door. I can get outside and recharge, explore nature’s wonders with my kids, and experience the changing seasons in full without having to make a plan or get in a car.
Meanwhile, the grocery store is less than fifteen minutes away and there are bigger cities with most everything you need in under an hour radius. You get all the benefits of living close to nature while still having access to the amenities of modern life.
Humans have lived in this region for tens of thousands of years.
Some of the finest prehistoric cave paintings and engravings are just down the road, not mention the plethora of Roman churches, medieval castles, and endless array of old stone cottages like something out of a fairytale.
And of course, for as long as people have been here, they have been eating, drinking, and learning what the land has to offer. The culinary and agricultural traditions in Dordogne have deep roots and continue to evolve today, from truffle mushrooms, local wines, and walnut everything to delicacies from the river, artisan produce, and foie gras if you’re into that.
Even though we all have 5G and tv on our phones now, living in Dordogne invites you to slow down anyway. Maybe it’s the farmer’s fields along the winding roads that remind us we cannot go faster than the seasons. Maybe it’s the millenia-old cliff dwellings and castles perched on hills whose original owners have long since been lost to memory that put the urgency of daily life into perspective. Maybe it’s the unexpected abundance of prayer flags and recent yet profound arrival of the Buddha’s teachings in the region that remind us that wisdom and happiness are found within. Maybe it’s just in the air.
Who knows.
I know that as the train rolled past vineyards, fields, and forest at sunset the first evening I arrived, I felt a change.
It felt like coming home.
I’ve heard the same thing from so many people who discovered Dordogne by chance or circumstance and decided to make it our home.
There’s something special here, and it makes you want to stay.
I make art to capture this place—the incredible nature and culture here and the feeling of living right in it.
If you want art that brings the magic of Dordogne into your space, you can find available art in my shop here on the website. If you want to stay up to date on new series, sign up for my newsletter and become an Art Insider.
2013 was the year of my spiritual quest.
I figured my life was still starting out—I was twenty-three at the time—and I wanted to make sure it would be meaningful. I could bake anywhere and paint anywhere—the things I was doing at that time—but where could I really find out what reality and being human was all about?
I planned to visit three different centers offering Buddhist studies and meditation and see what I found.
I encountered Buddhism as a teenager, and it just clicked.
If the Buddha already saw the nature of reality, it seemed easier to follow the path he laid out than try to figure the meaning of life out from scratch.
So that's what I've been doing ever since.
I spent three months in India and was planning to spend three months in Virginia after France. But as soon as the train crossed into Dordogne from the neighboring region, there was no going back. I felt as though I was coming home.
With its fairytale stone buildings, its millennia of history and culture, and its nature that's not really wild and not really tame, which is how I feel most of the time.
And so I decided to stay.
And here I am still.
It's called Where The Forest Meets The Field, and I'll be releasing it here on my website soon!
This series is made up of seven paintings inspired by the colors of autumn in Dordogne.
I met a lot of bug friends working on these paintings outside and realized that autumn is fatal for most of them. These reflections on mortality are part of this series, and hit even closer to home when I lost an old (human) friend in November as I finished up these works.
I hope they inspire you to appreciate the beauty and brevity of life.
If you’re thinking about buying a painting but not sure which to choose, here’s a little guide starting with the room you have in mind to put a piece of art.
You need a painting that fits where you want to put it! So look around and identify potential wall spaces. You don’t have to narrow it down to one, but take note of the possibilities and the different paintings formats that would work in each space. Will you need a big piece or a smaller one? Horizontal; vertical; maybe square? Would it work to pair two pieces to fill a larger space?
Do you want something more peaceful or more energetic? Do you want a painting that makes you think or inspires you to move?
Deciding the feeling you want a painting to anchor in your space immediately clarifies what you’re looking for.
When you look at each painting, stop and ask yourself, “What does this make me feel?”
Take note of which paintings tick the box you’re looking for.
Now that you’ve know the format and the feeling of the painting you’re looking for, you just need to find the one that goes best in your space. Think about how the existing colors in the room will work with a painting. You want an artwork to be focal point but not look out of place. Paintings with a similar color palette to the room are an easy choice. For a bolder option, you can choose a painting with colors that contrast the room’s palette without clashing.
Most of all, bring your curiosity, enjoy the process of looking at art, and have fun!
I've always been an artist—always been driven by the urge to create and the wish to share my creations.
But I also struggled finding focus in my art practice and rationalizing creativity in a world filled with so many different needs.
Then I had kids.
Being a parent taught me to put others before myself and the importance of sharing my gifts even if I don’t fully understand them. I committed to making art and stopped fretting about whether it was meaningful enough—focusing instead on my own search for meaning and sharing it.
So much of what I find meaningful in life comes from the reminder that life is short and always changing. The changes I see in my kids every day are my first and best reminder of this.
Even though I’ve been an artist a lot longer than I’ve been a mom, the responsibility and experiences of each have formed me in equal parts.
Being an artist means approaching the world with unceasing curiosity and voracity. It means being honest about the hard parts while still looking for beauty in every part. It means filtering all our questions and their possible answers into something we can look at and offer others.
Being a parent means finding joy in what is—on its face—a very thankless job. It means making an endless string of important, potentially life-changing decisions with very little to go on. It means taking responsibility for everything when you have control over almost nothing.
Being an artist and being a mom are both hard jobs—hard to do and often hard for others to understand when they’re not doing them. Both are frequently undervalued.
And yet. And yet.
Both are so meaningful and so rewarding. Together they add up to a lot of who I am, of how I learn, and how I move through the world in the hopes of offering something useful.
As an artist and a mom, you face your limits every day. And you have to go beyond them (some days you manage better than others).
You face life’s big questions every day. Why does James’s sock still feel crinkly against his foot even though I’ve taken it off and put it back on four times just before leaving for school is high on my list, btw.
You get to be close to people—to share with them and learn from them and offer them something of value.
Sometimes it can be hard to juggle both. Creating art and nurturing the people we’ve created both require time and attention.
Lately, I’ve been scrambling to finish up this painting series inspired by autumn here in Dordogne, and autumn’s almost over. Putting paint to canvas is always a joy, but this plan is not meeting its projected timeline. There are days I wish I had more time to be in the studio.
But where would I take that time from?
Not from the time, I spend on spelling lists or bedtime stories. Not from gathering acorns in the woods or building magnet block houses in the living.
We each only get so much time. I wouldn’t change how I spend mine for the world.
I just need to learn to plan accordingly, hehe.
The other day, I was walking with a friend when I took her by surprise.
I stopped short, leaned down, and said, “Oh, gotta get this guy out of the road,” then picked up a tiny beige caterpillar and moved the little guy into the plants that it was slowly inching toward.
She wasn’t so much surprised that I moved it out of the way.
While perhaps a bit unusual, it’s a simple and decent thing to do. She would have done the same if she had seen it.
But that was it—she was very surprised that I saw the critter at all. A slightly translucent small beige caterpillar does not stand out on slightly bumpy beige stone walkway.
Here’s what’s happened:
Since I started painting again and specifically focusing on the landscape around me here in Dordogne, I’ve become much more aware of the seasons, the environment, and everything in it.
From one day to the next, I notice which plants are which color. The rose hips were the first touch of red this autumn. Then creeper vines lit the landscape on fire. Now the sumac and smoke bush are joining the party.
What’s more, my vision has actually gotten better—or certainly keener.
Spotting that caterpillar was not the first time I’ve surprised someone by picking out an otherwise invisible camouflaged creature from its hiding place. A swallowtail caterpillar standing on a blade of grass; a teeny snail amid my painting tools while working in the river.
Just the other day with the family, I met my first ever conehead mantis blending into the late season thyme we were harvesting for winter culinary projects.
And they are known for being rare because they are so sneakily discrete!
Spending time looking and practicing curiosity has actually made me better at looking.
And I’m so grateful for everything I see.
The diversity of life found just here in the fields and forest around us in the French countryside is astounding.
It’s humbling to be reminded how many other creatures we share this world with if we only look.
Who, like us, are just trying to get by and find happiness in their own way.
Becoming friends with bugs was not on my mind when I took my canvas and paints outside.
It wasn’t even really on my mind when I started tuning in to the landscape and the changing seasons more. But it’s an unintended side effect.
I naturally pick them out of the landscape now.
I get the chance to stop and slow down and consider what an experience so different from mine might be like.
To remember that change—in the seasons, in the landscape, in our relationships, in our own bodies—is happening to all of us, and we all have to face it the best we can.
Every painting I make is a record of this process.
Of every changing color; every bug I meet. An ode to the beauty of this place, of the creatures we share it with, and of finding our place in it amidst the endless change that is life.
Every artist has their own language and their own technique.
This is how I work.
Actually creating a painting—well, a series—is the process of taking the colors and shapes and feelings and ideas collected watching the seasons change and then picking out the simplest bits to see what they do when I put them together on a canvas.
I’ve currently got six canvases in progress that I started in different spots around the countryside here in Dordogne.
I'm using the same brushstrokes and colors to create different impressions of summer giving way to fall in southwestern France.
I mostly use fat bristly brushes for rushing trails of brushstrokes that feel like the undeniable energy of being alive.
Flat foam brushes dipped in alcohol and ink for the slow spread of color that is those creeping feelings you can’t quite make out.
Water poured over acrylic paint and swooshed across the canvas with my fingers for all that stuff wooshing around in the background.
A palette knife or a tiny round brush for details—those small, sharp contrasts that throw life into high relief.
Dry pigment blown over wet; a sudden squeeze or spatter of paint stretching into an unexpected color. There are so many textures to experience—some that sneak up on you suddenly.
There’s always a line through that we try to draw to make sense of it all.
And color to fill in the details.
What is it like to be alive and feel whatever an artist-mother-seeker-dreamer feels as the summer turns to fall amid the fields and rivers and villages of southwestern France these days?
It feels like firethorn pale orange and wild marjoram burgundy. Like the crackly brown of a panoply of burs and the not-quite-white whites of cat ear dandelion fluff, spider’s webs caught in the light and the sparkle of morning dew reflected in the ten am sun. The orange, green, blue, and brown of the fluttering butterfly rainbow frolicking about the fields.
These are the colors of this moment.
This moment is also William starting to spell. “L’Europe: l-apostrophe-e-majuscule-u-r-o-p-e.”
James becoming spontaneously good at math. “If Mommy eats two eggs and Daddy eats two eggs, you and William eat two eggs and Ema eats one egg, how many eggs do we need to cook?”
“Nine.” Without a spot of hesitation. The kid is four.
What is this?
Why does life change so quickly?
I can never know exactly where we’re all headed, and yet I couldn’t wish for us to stay the same either.
The possibility of change—the principle of change—is what makes life possible.
I wouldn’t want it any other way.
Except we’re all headed where the butterflies are headed when the first frost comes.
And I would maybe want to be a little more at ease with that.
Change isn’t only joy and growth.
It’s also disappointment and loss. Just ask the butterflies in two months’ time.
I don’t know what they’d say, but somehow putting brush to canvas is a way of maybe finding out.
Insistent observation of change within and without can only yield understanding over time.
Perhaps a little peace and a little freedom, I would wager.
And so it goes with the colors of the season, my squeeze bottle, and a broken-bristled brush by the light filtering through the trees as purgatory sets in for the butterflies.
I had this grand plan to create my next bunch of paintings filled with golden fields of wheat and ensuing straw bales, but they all bailed (ha) mid-August.
I had an internal crisis for about a week trying to decide whether I should paint it anyway, but it didn’t feel quite right.
My whole process is about creating from what’s around me. This place; this time: Southwestern France. The Dordogne countryside. Late summer; almost autumn. It’s crazy how when you get up close, the seasons change so quickly and so constantly.
It’s almost an absurdity to make a painting series about any one period of time because everything is shifting so quickly. Blackberry season is down to the last hangers-on. Plum season is rotting on the ground and getting devoured by hornets. Fig season is well under way but surely just as momentary.
Where the field were full of wild carrot buds what seems like yesterday, they’re now full of crackly beige stems and seeds. The wildflowers are just hanging on, and it’s probably the height of butterfly season, but, man, it’s dry out there.
Roses have turned to rosehips; the apples are starting to ripen. Acorns and hazelnuts are appearing bright green and working their way toward shades of gold and brown.
And this, this in fact is the work.
Not brainstorming or inventing ideas.
But rather just opening my eyes and looking at what’s around.
There is a surprising abundance of squiggles right about now—loose jangles of grass leaf and spiral-shaped mystery seeds. Gotta identify those.
The same way the mind identifies the recurrence of red-orange on the rosehips and apples and that one kind of butterfly. The way you notice the terra cotta of dried oak leaves mirroring the terra cotta of a freshly-tilled field.
I could go on and on describing it all, but somehow the beauty isn’t just in the image or even the recounting of it.
It’s in the feeling. The experience.
The delight of looking that yields a dawning awareness.
All this change. All this brilliant, vibrant detail that is life. This movement is happening around us and also in us.
We’re part of it. Not separate and not the same either.
And this. This is the story to tell.
I think it’s the same story I’m discovering and expressing every time I put brush to canvas.
And it’s worth telling again and again because it shows up in so many different ways, with so many different faces, in so many different moments.
Each of us is a living, walking, breathing incarnation of change.
There’s beauty in that.
Freedom too, I think. If we can just get used to the idea.
So that’s a story worth telling.
Let’s make a painting about that.
There we go. I found it; what I was looking for. Inspiration.
Which isn’t invention or serendipity or an unexpected gift—though it can be those things too.
But at its heart, inspiration is delighting in what’s around us.
Taking an interest in what this life is about.
Are you in?
Because this is just the beginning.
Every painting starts with nature.
I take the kids out to play snakes in the grass on the lawn, to practice riding their bicycles—or four-wheel low rider for James, or to hunt for fallen leaves, mushrooms, or tadpoles depending on the season.
I take myself out for walks to catch up on sunshine, the sound of wind, water, and other living creatures, and most of all myself.
Out in nature—with the kids or on my own—is where I can zoom out. Where I connect with things in the world that are bigger than myself.
The natural world is filled with urgency—birth, death, hunger, transformation.
Yet it’s beautiful at the same time. The many lives of plants and animals being lived around me put whatever is happening in my own life into perspective. Life is short, and things change quick. So focus on what matters.
Every painting starts with a color I find wandering through my corner of the Dordogne.
A color from out in nature that speaks to whatever is happening inside me.
I take that color back to the studio—or sometimes the studio finds its way outside.
Every painting starts with a simple gesture on raw cotton canvas.
More specifically, it starts with my arm wildly gesticulating in the space in front of my canvas until I get a sense of the right movement and proportions to actually put a mark on the canvas. Then comes either a wonky old house paintbrush with watered-down acrylic paint or a fat, flat sponge brush dipped in rubbing alcohol.
I make a shape. And then the trickiest part begins.
Each painting comes to life with layers and layers of ink, acrylic paint, alcohol and water.
If I’m outside, occasionally bugs, grass, and rain get involved. I never know exactly where I’m going. I have the images in my mind that I started the painting with. And I have the story that’s connected to them.
This painting started with dandelions, some of this year’s first warm sunshine, and tiny green bugs scrambling across the yellow flowers.
I was thinking about how some things in life are obvious and some are so subtle they go unnoticed.
Often, between those two things, there’s a whole world.
Sunshine on your face is like a solid hug or the first bite of a hot meal. It centers you right in that moment in a way you didn’t know you needed until it’s there. Once it is, the feeling of ease takes over your whole body, and the only thing to do is go, “Mmmm.” That’s an obvious thing.
The tiny bug rollicking around next to me on a dandelion head is not an obvious thing at all.
I almost didn’t see it, except I pulled out my phone to snap some pictures of the dandelions. Yet there it was, perhaps, I’d say probably, feeling the exact same thing as me. “Mmmm, sunshine.” Maybe even more so because as much as spring sun feels like new life to me, it really is the beginning of life for bugs everywhere. Only when the weather warms up can they even appear to enjoy the world at all.
But life for a bug is harder than it is for me.
If my life feels short, then theirs is utterly transient. And if my life feels challenging, then at least there’s nothing trying to eat me. If my place in the world sometimes feels unclear or uncertain, at least it doesn’t disappear into a puff of fluff all at once.
That’s the world you can find in between what’s obvious and what’s not obvious at all.
And that’s what goes into the layers of my paintings.
That’s what the lights and darks of movement and color point to—all the range of experience and meaning we can find in our lives. Some things are drastic. Some things are gentle. Sometimes we see things in broad strokes and sometimes it’s all in the details. Life is vast, and the way we feel about our days covers a vast range too.
Different mediums help bring out different colors and textures.
Alcohol helps a color spread smoothly into the canvas like sinking into the sheets after a day where everything went as planned.
Water sits on the surface leaving a jagged edge—doesn’t life have so many jagged edges?
Drips and splatters can be solid or translucent depending on whether they’re made by ink, acrylic paint, or powdered pigment. They can pool shadows or look like reflecting light. They speak to the darkest and the brightest places we can find inside ourselves.
When alcohol and water meet, they make a texture like pebbles or ripples at the river’s edge. The kind of trembling you feel when facing uncertainty or anticipation.
After that comes the make-or-break-it point.
Because life is not just a landscape you walk through. It’s you. Walking through it.
And so every painting gets a line.
Sometimes two—aren’t we fortunate not to walk the earth alone?
The line is a trajectory across the landscape. The line is the path we choose every day in our own life. The line we use to connect the dots between everything we experience and the meaning we make of it day by day. A line that goes on and on and on until one day—it doesn’t.
Each of our lives is a brief and bright path traced across a changing landscape.
When I add the line to a painting, it’s a one-shot deal. If the pastel breaks, I just have to pick up a piece and keep following the line to its conclusion.
In theory, adding the line could ruin a painting. It could go completely wrong and screw up the whole thing. But I haven’t lost one that way yet.
The end result is never something I could have planned or foreseen when I started out. But somehow, each painting finds it own way. Once the pieces come together, it’s up to us to look at the whole and decide what it means.
Rather like life.
