Messy Mystic Originals

If you read this all the way though, I think you'll agree that I have had a more circuitous route to finding my artistic voice than most...

I started out my professional adult career as a registered nurse, completely convinced that I didn't have an artistic bone in my body. I thought I was firmly in the left brain zone. But after a 14 year career using just that side of my brain, I had to hang up my stethoscope when my "stable chronic illness" went off the rails and sent me full time into my most fulfilling "job"... as Attila the Mom. During the next ten years I concentrated all my energies on getting healthy again and raising two remarkably wonderful (and normal) humans. I never considered art, even as a hobby, until I was strong armed by a friend into trying out a pottery class once my oldest went to college. That's all it took.

I reveled in my love affair with clay and created a thriving art show business selling spiritual wall art using a technique that I developed to fuse dichroic glass to the clay surface. Unfortunately, after about five years of success, my marriage suddenly failed and derailed that business. In 2016, I relocated back to my home town in the Piney Woods of East Texas and now live in a wonderful antebellum Victorian house that feeds my artistic soul...but did not give me the type of space I need to continue clay work with kilns. Instead I decided to pursue my interest in glass further and entered into the colorful world of glass mosaics and stained glass work, with spiritual themes like angels continuing to be a huge spiritual focus.

Unfortunately in 2019 my upward momentum was interrupted again when I hit another bumpy time in my chronic health journey, coming out of a long period of remission with a bang and losing much of the fine motor flexibility in my hands In the next two years, forcing me to basically stop doing art altogether. I was miserably unhappy without art in my life, let me tell ya. It took some hard therapy work, medication tinkering and a lot of patience to gain back much of what I lost but ultimately I decided not to return to regular glass work, but investigate the more hand friendly world of painting instead.

I started out my painting exploration going in every direction at once though...I investigated watercolor. I took a class in Abstracts. I poured fluid acrylics,. I even played with Neurographic Art and Zentangles before realizing that my Inner Child just wanted to PLAY with ALL the paints, papers, pens, chalks, pastels, inks, charcoals, thank you very much! It was realizing that all I really needed to do was to trust that Inner Child's voice that finally led me to find my signature style of multilayered and brightly colored backgrounds and the joy of discovering what images are hiding in them.

But where in the heck does weaving come into all this?

Along the way of recovering my hand function, I took a detour into the tactile and colorful world of weaving. Working with warp and weft, handling yarns and working with looms was excellent therapy for hands and heart. However, I discovered that there's only so many scarves I could weave before getting bored and looked for ways to merge my weaving with my spiritual life. I started by making myself a dining table runner and smaller one for displaying my crystal collections and suddenly all my friends wanted them as well. Now I use two different size and style looms to satisfy my urge to feel, fondle and caress all the wonderful yarns and fibers that I use in my free form woven creations for your table and abstract wall hangings to bring warmth to your spaces.

I realize that on the surface, it must seem like a long, disconnected art journey, with me traveling like a drunken monkey from one disconnected medium to the next. But there has been a connection all along… my abstract eye for the organic shape, the suggestion, the form and color that lets you see what your eye wants to see in what I create. Each piece is born of a determination to find a way forward in overcoming the many obstacles that blends beautifully with the joyful exuberance of my loud Inner Child voice to COME AND PLAY!.

In visiting this shop, I hope that you enjoy this glimpse into the colorful world of my intuitive art in all its various forms.