A Full circle moment
Early one morning, I was walking the dog through the neighborhood. He was deep into an important sniff when I looked up to admire a beautiful house in front of me, its warm interior lights glowing against the quiet morning.
And then I saw it.
One of my very own paintings, proudly hanging in the living room facing the street.
I was gobsmacked.
I tried not to stare long enough for it to become creepy, but I stood there for a moment taking it in before eventually turning to continue our walk. I couldn’t help but marvel at the thought that something I had created with my own two hands was now hanging on the wall of a complete stranger’s home.
I don’t get to meet every person who brings one of my paintings into their home, so there was something especially delightful about this unexpected glimpse into the life of one of my collectors. It made the distance between artist and collector suddenly feel very small. It also got me thinking about the quiet power of artwork—for both the artist and the collector.
Every brushstroke, scrape, mark, and layer in my paintings represents a moment in time. There are emotions, decisions, discoveries, frustrations, and little leaps of intuition recorded on the surface. By the time a painting leaves my studio, it carries a piece of that journey with it. And then something extraordinary happens: someone else sees it. They connect with it in a way that is entirely their own and are moved enough to give it a new home, where it becomes part of their daily surroundings—and, eventually, part of their memories.
The painting that began as a deeply personal experience for me takes on a new life in someone else’s home. I may never know all the moments that happen around it—the morning coffee, the conversations, the quiet evenings, the celebrations, or the ordinary Tuesdays—but that’s part of the magic.
Perhaps this is one of the greatest gifts of being an artist: creating something from an experience that was once entirely your own, then watching it become part of someone else’s story. And every now and then, you get the rare joy of discovering that story is unfolding just a few blocks away.
A pretty wonderful reminder that art has a way of finding its way home.
