Hello! I hope you all are having a great week. It's been a bit of a rough one for me. I started having bad pain on Sunday and ended up having to spend a few days on pain medication sleeping through it. Not my favorite way to spend my days. But I'm back with the living and feeling better, so bring on the sunshine and art!

I finished up this painting last night that I started on Saturday.


As I was working on him, he made me smile a ton. There is just something really warm and fun about him. His name is Mikke and he's looking for a new home to hang around. He loves all kinds of music, but is particularly fond of The Doors and Jimi Hendrix.



I often get asked where the characters I paint come from or what is their story. My work really stems from relationships with loved ones, whether they be family or friends. I turned 36 in November and came to a realization that many people I know and love are loosing people they love. Friends are loosing parents and grandparents to ill health and old age. For a while it seemed every other day I was hearing about someone dying. It really hurt my heart to see people I love struggling with the sense of lose. Then sadly I went through my own hard time loosing my maternal grandmother, who was one of the main reasons I got started in art when she taught me to sew and knit as a child. She introduced me and encouraged a love of arts and crafts and that spread to a love of the folk art movement. Her life really influenced who I became as an artist. It felt like this great hole in my heart had been made. I will always regret that she was never able to see my art hanging in a show.

But instead of letting that weigh on me I felt like creating some art to honor the people who have meant something to my loved ones. Mikke was born out of the huge lose felt by a friend when his grandmother passed away in 2011. She was the constant source of love and stability during his childhood, so her passing has left a huge void in his life.



My friends grandmother was someone who was definitely a part of her generation doing all the things women her age did to raise a family. She created a home for them and enveloped it in safety and comfort. But as she grew older she also knew to have fun and had a great sense of humor. Mikke is ready to have fun and dance the night away, but is surrounded by a pattern that mimics some of the traditional shapes used in quilts as a reminder that our loved ones live on in our hearts.