This painting isn't finished yet. I'm sharing it anyway, because the in-between is the part nobody sees — and it's the part that asks the most of me.
I am working on a custom painting commission for one of my collectors. Not a stranger who found me online, but someone who already has five of my paintings in their home. Someone who knows my work, lives with it every day, and trusted me enough to ask for one more.
You would think that makes it easier. In some ways it does. In other ways, it makes my heart beat a little faster every time I pick up a brush.
It starts messy
Every commission begins with a conversation, and then — for a long while — with a mess. The first layers were loose and blue and cream, with the roses only suggested, like ghosts waiting to be invited in. If you had walked into my studio that week, you might have wondered what I was doing.
The first layers: loose, blue, and full of questions.
Then slowly, the flowers began to take their places. Some came forward. Some I painted over. Some came back again. This is how I work — building, covering, uncovering — until the painting starts to tell me what it wants to be.
The roses finding their places.
It is joyful
And oh, it is joyful. There are days when the paint table looks like a small storm passed through it, when my hands and clothes carry every color, and I can't stop smiling. Flowers have a way of doing that to me. Roses, peonies, daisies — I keep returning to them because they hold so much: tenderness, abundance, the promise that something beautiful keeps growing even after a long winter.
The glamorous side of art life.
Much of the texture you see is built by hand — paper cut and shaped piece by piece, layered and painted until the petals rise off the surface. It is slow work. It is also the part I love most, because texture invites people to come closer, and a painting that invites you closer is a painting you keep discovering for years.
Petals built by hand, one layer at a time.
And it is vulnerable
Here is the part I don't always say out loud. Even when a collector already owns five of my paintings — even when I know they love my art — I still wonder: How do I make them love this one even more?
That question can be a gift. It pushes me to go deeper, to pay attention to what moves them, to bring my very best. But it can also become a trap. Because the moment I start painting only to please, I risk losing the very thing they fell in love with in the first place — my own voice, my own heart in the work.
So I hold both. I listen carefully to my collector, and I stay honest to what the painting needs. I don't sell my heart to make something safe. A commission made without the artist's authentic voice might look right, but it wouldn't feel right — and I believe people can always feel the difference.
Pure joy — and a little bit of nerves.
Almost there
The painting is close now. The garden is full, the colors are singing, and there are still a few conversations left between me and the canvas before it goes home. I'll share it when it's finished — and I already know I'll be holding my breath when my collector sees it for the first time.
A garden, almost ready to go home.
If you've been dreaming about a piece made for your own story — a home, a memory, a verse, a season of life — I would be honored to talk with you. Every commission is personal, and every one of them still makes my heart beat a little faster.