God’s Invitation to Paint

Color has always been an important part of my life. As an interior designer, most of my customers are fellow color-lovers. I’ve had the privilege of bringing color and life into customers’ homes for over 30 years. As an artist, that love of color was an easy transition. Color makes my heart jump. It’s the whipped cream on top of everything for me!

My painting journey is very much a God-journey, as you can’t separate the two. This strong urge to paint came seemingly out of nowhere, when I was 61. Since the desire did not come with any talent, I began to press in to God for understanding and help. Thus began the journey of God teaching me how to paint.

I wish I could say it was one of those God-easy things, but it was not. There was so much frustration at first because my early paintings were really terrible (most have been destroyed to protect the guilty).

As I would watch other artists’ videos, one thing I wished they had explored was what to do when you run into a problem. How do you even know what the problem is? Maybe they were so advanced, they never made mistakes.

When I felt led to begin producing YouTube videos and tutorials on Skill Share, one thing I wanted to highlight to students was how to fix things. How do you prevent a painting from going off the rails in the first place, and if it’s already gone, how do you fix it? In most of my full-length tutorials, you’ll see any mistakes that I’ve made and how I decided to fix them. You’ll hear me think out loud as I’m choosing this color over that color, this brush over that brush, etc. I’ll let you get inside my head as I work through a painting from beginning to end. Hopefully, that won’t be a scary experience!

In addition to producing instructional videos, an important part of this journey has been my partnership with Hydrating Humanity.  This is a non-profit, well-digging operation that is heavily sponsored by my church.  To date, they have built over 700 wells.   When possible, they also show the Jesus Film at the dedication of each well.