Behind the Brush: Inspiration for the New Collection

Every season of life brings with it a shift, sometimes subtle, sometimes profound, and my work has always evolved alongside those transitions. This new collection grew from one of those seasons. It’s less a rebrand and more an unfolding… a returning to myself as an artist and a person.

A New Landscape, A New Rhythm

Every time I’ve moved to a new place, something different rises up to inspire me. When I lived in Singapore, it took me a long time to understand what I wanted to say through my paintings. Everything was so viscerally different, the colors, the sounds, the heat, even the way the air moved.

Moving back to the Lowcountry has been its own kind of rediscovery. The last time I lived here, I was a child. Coming back as an adult means seeing it through completely new eyes. The landscape is unlike anywhere I’ve lived in years, deeply green, lush, layered with forests, marsh, wildlife, and a softness to the light that shifts throughout the day.

We went from living in a dense urban neighborhood, where houses were ten feet apart, to settling on two acres where deer wander through the backyard and foxes play along the tree line. That change in rhythm, in space, in daily life… it slowed us down in the best way.

It reminded us of our “why.”

The Pull to Slow Down & Reconnect

Over the last few years, life had become incredibly fast. Being online so much, especially teaching, launching, constantly producing, began to wear on me. I felt the pressure to keep up, to stay visible, to create for the sake of creating. It left little room for the real human experiences that fill my well of inspiration in the first place.

So our move was intentional. We wanted a place that moved a half-beat slower. A place that grounded us and made space for presence again. That shift opened up a path for me to reconnect with my own artistic voice in a deeper way.

Returning to the Canvas, Returning to Myself

As I eased out of the constant pace of online teaching, I felt an urge to work differently, more intuitively, more improvisationaly. I wanted to get my hands dirty again, to make marks on the canvas that surprised me and forced me to respond.

The person I am now is not the same person I was a decade ago, or even five years ago. And my art has shifted with me. I’ve been craving exploration: pushing myself to take risks, letting the work lead me, and allowing the unknown to be part of the process.

Why Palms? Why Now?

This led me back, again, to a subject that has followed me throughout my career: palms.

I’ve painted palm trees in nearly every style imaginable. Stylized, bold, realistic, loose, colorful, quiet. I understand how light touches them, how they move, how they hold emotion and memory.

But palms mean something different to me now.
They’ve become a mirror for where I am in life: rooted, yet flexible. Grounded, yet open to movement and growth.

In this collection, I’m pushing them in new directions, experimenting with texture, mark making, unexpected color choices, and materials that create a visceral, intuitive response. I’m letting the subject be familiar, but the process be new. There’s peace in returning to a theme, and excitement in discovering what new things I have to say through it.

A Natural Evolution

This new direction isn’t a rebrand so much as an evolution, the same way all artists evolve if they stay open to their surroundings and their own growth. Think of Matisse moving from one style into bold pattern, then collage. Or Picasso’s shift from realism to his blue period to cubism. Artists grow because people grow.

My surroundings have changed.
My child is older.
My life has slowed.
The light is different here.
And so, naturally, my art is changing too.

What remains constant is the pull: the way art keeps calling me back, again and again. It’s how I make sense of the world, how I express the stages of my life, how I stay connected to who I am becoming.

This collection is simply the next chapter in that ongoing evolution, shaped by landscape, by intuition, by growth, and by the quiet beauty of a life intentionally lived.

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