what i would say is like my daughter says i was always an artist i would come from a family of artists goes back many many generations so i did it i've always done art my mom was not she wasn't pushing it she was just making sure you know we got fed and grew up and went to school so when it started to come out it was evident as i did art money on it it cost a lot but i was just smitten i had massive organization skills and all this is back in the days of having negatives so i everything was tedious you know like you don't want to waste film but i would take a whole role just on the cat jumping around in the yard or something loved it then let's see in high school i did great when i started taking ours i was fairly natural that but i wasn't i wasn't finding my thing i enjoyed some clay courses and took clay in high school that was great but again it wasn't like i was and finding my niche it wasn't until my mom took a course from a local lady for stained glass and then i was home from college i was just there to do this i was there for art i was at college for art again i was just i did well at much art and i didn't know what i wanted to do so i was just taking classes because my idea was to take classes at college until i could drive a tractor trailer which i thought would make enough money for me to figure out my life while i had some time alone and that was the plan and it did work really well then i went home for my freshman year right around christmas time had to get a christmas present for someone and my family w make gifts so i didn't i was on a mama didn't know what was going to do for the people i was living with in richmond it was a family i want to do something from and she was a car you can take the misting class and i was like oh so she showed me she gave me a five minute tutorial on leaded sting glass with the copper foil method and i i loved it i love the color i love the shapes my mom worked with scrap glass she wasn't cutting her own glass so it was just a matter of playing with broken pieces and fitting them and it was like a puzzle i love puzzles so i my mom gave me a brass ring and i fitted in it glass based on a very simple sketch of just raise like sun rays coming out from a point so it was just like a perspective piece and it was so much fun it was tedious though you know foiling every piece but within three days i had a gift made for the people i lived with and i was totally in love it was maybe i don't know a year or two later i found a notebook that i used to doodle on when i was in high school and it was just to cover those covers from the college will no bull type thing and i had drooled all over it in the shapes of the stained glass that i worked with so when i saw that it would just like the stained glass i just was shocked so i felt that there was like a natural almost genetic memory for  shape for things that drew me and i just knew i was it was akin to a confirmation i was on the path i was supposed to be and and so i continued with the glass work and it wasn't i didn't think i could draw i didn't think i could paint it just felt like that would be too scary to do and yet i was drawing my sketches for my mosaic work and they were great but i never owned it that i could draw there wasn't until  probably twelve years ago mosaic work that i just suddenly had this memory that i could paint and that's when i started to paint with oils significantly after i doodled in painting there was three paintings i did when i was young my mom bought me some acrylics for christmas and some canvases some different three you know they were just like sandwich together in the package three canvases it wasn't until after like i did the three canvases and i used a book and i painted and then i ran out of canvas because my mom never bought me any more so the paint just went to pot and the canvases i held onto him for a long time and then in a process of declaring my house i got rid of them and a friend wanted them so i gave them to her so she took them and she's like oh these are good you can't throw away i was like i don't so it wasn't until years after i started painting that i was at her house and saw like when i walked in the door i saw these paintings on the wall and they drew me because now i'm painting so i had this relationship with painting and i was like wow this is a pretty interesting and i went up to them and i'm looking at them and then i literally i died i thought oh my gosh these are these are mine i couldn't believe that i couldn't believe that they were that good and i couldn't believe in that moment that my mom did not give me more canvases i was like holy cow i was a kid doing this kind of like artwork at thirteen and they don't like recognize it i don't know so my mom was not paying it so i was just blown away and then i wanted my pictures back you know like because i wanted to be able to show then and now you know kind of thing yeah it was pretty wild so yeah i just it was a gradual process of coming back  obvious idea i was uncomfortable i didn't even know i had skill when i was a kid if i had been stronger in my sense of self as a child i would have owned my abilities much sooner i think well it was the only thing that interested me so i knew at sixteen i was planning to go into truck driving because i felt like that was a really good place to just work on me save money live below my means i had no clue how much money it took to live but i had a feeling that going into debt was four years of college was not going to cut it so and in high school i took this test or something i don't know what it was but they run you through this little thing it's like what do you want to be when you grow up photographer because i was doing photography and i loved it and it said well this is what you're going to need you're going to need four years of college than two years of some specialty extra on top of it and you can expect to top out and make no like maybe it was like you could expect to make twenty two thousand maybe your first year and top out at twenty six i was just like while i'm not doing photography then like that doesn't make any sense it did not make any sense so i was up well i'm going to have to figure something else out photographer the have to be my you know my hobby so when i stumbled on to a truck driving i mean i don't even i didn't even know anyone who drove trucks so when i stumbled on that i was like this makes sense because then i can live on the truck save my money and if in a year chucking doesn't work out the have money saved to go back to school so the two years i went to college prior to trucking drain my account of my savings and i don't know i i didn't know how to go work two or three jobs to save money to pay a school year i had figured that one out babysitting  didn't make that much money so it worked out it worked out really well i actually didn't retire trucking until the artwork was rolling into the tractor so i was doing commission work f in the cab of my truck on the bed and i was like i knew this was not the smartest thing you know working with glass where i sleep functionally wise or whatever it just was not a good mix so i did that t winters in a row where people's commission work overlapped into the season i would do trucking and then i was like i gotta make a choice cell that was and i just retired truck driving and just focus on the art advice that i do give people is that it's more often than not the parents because the parents are looking for the answers for their kids like what i do or has and and i always just tell them if your kid loves art and he works on it every day he will find himself it is art it's i think when we get forced to do things or you know boxed in that it's hard it's hard to to be in our truth with it and art isn't direct access to our personal truth so how are we doing it it's like how are we being loose with it are we being imaginative are we are we applying creativity to it that's the kind of thing i would i would just recommend playing and doing  yet yeah i don't know if practice explore i would say explore before practice you know i'm working with a nine year old right now i teach art to and this nine year old he stumbled on we were we're always looking at different things and we've been you know doing different mediums trying different things out and we stumble on gravity art or gravity painting flow painting and the kids falls in love so like for the last seven months every lesson he has to pour pain this is his passion he loves it and it's fun because to see someone who is like all right so we are going for pay day you know and i didn't the last class he did he didn't get the poor pay because i wanted him to take it to another level so i had him spend his hour class building up a canvas with clay so that help or next next class and he was ok with that typically he won't actually i don't even think he's ninety eight years old typically he's just not ok if he's not pouring that paint he likes to see the cells build and the colors merge and form and to see him light up to see him like explore that that's inspiring you know that's what i want to my own art i don't want to be doing it in and judging myself and walking away and feeling yucky about the project or the experience so it's like how do you stay present in the fact that it's just an exploration and then as you stay present as i stay present and i see that i'm exploring this piece i start to feel that the parts of me you know that are coming up in it i almost don't know like it's like the bird at the chicken or the egg because i've been drawn to the the french impressionists but i didn't study them and so i'm i'm my my mom's family is french and it's very possible that with all the generations that my love for the french impressionist comes out of a director an attic predisposition to be more impressionistic so when i started painting i didn't copy any one percent but i loved it i just naturally did impressionistic work and i love it the drive i have as far as being an artist is my passion to create so a new medium is exciting i create in food also i create i always create new dishes and never use a recipe that would pin me down so i just i love the process of creation in creating i feel new and alive and aligned and excited and it seems to create a momentum of more and more and more and then when i have to come back down and do the same old whatever that might be you know like d when i do that is sometimes pulls me out of it and then the momentum is broken but it's just that the creating just  so new ideas for noncommissioned work come up in the quiet so in the quiet albeit thinking of something that i'm working on or i'll just be dreaming of what's possible like the possibilities like who i really want to play with watercolor and what's possible and i'll be thinking up a new class for the kids i teach and or i'll be stumbling around on you tube and something will catch my eye it's in that and then just sitting with it in the quiet though it's always in the quiet like at sunrise watching the sunrise or laying in bed in the morning or drifting off it and i something of those pop up like an idea like oh try this you know like let's try this and i'll see it play out you know i'll see that idea play out and then all the oh my gosh and so doing that  i would say yes to that i love to teach i believe that everything that i know can and should be available to everybody so when i teach  don't hold back i felt like in college there were teachers who held back they held secrets like you i'm not going to tell you about contrast i'm not going to tell you about how to make this like work but the few people that have had so much there's this one artist who had massive impact and i think  but as far as talking maybe five minutes but it was really powerful like those five minutes because he shared at the level that it mattered like how amazing is that you know to to just share the piece that is like and once a critical but that matters that piece that makes all the difference you know who cares about all the rest you know blah blah blah but if you can do that one piece that really matters so you know his piece that he shared with me it's almost like these little pieces are your truth you know and they're so powerful and so special that they just zing right through you they align you in a moment and you know that thing it's like you remembered it you remembered it and you own it so that's my thing it's like i just want to share truth with people and truth and art and when and if they're ready or if it's risen you know resonates with their own truth then it's really magical like there's just not a lot of people giving away truth yeah i would do my best so intuition is the ability to tune within to connect up with information truth your higher self but to connect up with knowledge and information so being an  e artist i don't go to a book i don't go to a teacher i don't go to a class to learn it i just tune in to me within two to no i just tune within to know so when i  started to pain there was this moment there was a family moment my family gets along like i have five brother five brothers and a sister and my parents and always pretty gentle with one another and you know care about with you know care about each other so there was this moment that happened that involved my sister and my dad and it got me really angry and a friend of mine said to me i would do some more therapy about it and i was like i can't do arts everything at the time i was a glass artist who didn't live i could draw or paint or whatever and so she says do art therapy and i'm like well i'll just control it and it's not going to do any good i'm most often a happy person and so this anger went on for five days six days and it was just like a week i was like that's it i'm over this so i dove into like so i grabbed a notebook and i grabbed some some oil pastels like kranz i was truck driving at the time i brought everything on the truck with me and i thought well i am so doing this are there because i was so angry and it was like me and every time i come down the anger rushed up again and that was not fun so i took this notebook and i started to just write a word on the bottom and anger was my first word i didn't know how to do art therapy i was just winging it so i wrote anger on the bottom and i scribble destroying and i was mad at my dad i was angry at my dad but all the artwork had to do with my mom and it was stuff from my childhood it wasn't anything to do with now it was wild and so i right there was anger and i i was just wrote the next word that came up in a school picture and looked at the picture and i'd feel it and as i did this i thought well this should be over so i wrote like the word that acceptance right to finish this up and it was like some angry picture of like i guess at that and at that point i let go and i just let it happen so i did this it might have taken twenty minutes maybe revie maybe fifteen maybe twenty and when i was done i felt dein and i was like why within hours after completing that art therapy i remembered i could paint that was huge i felt it in every cell of my body i was hungry to pain i was like i was more hungry i was it was as though i was craving it so bad that i could eat it i could taste it was like it was almost like it was like being massively horny you know it was this amazing overwhelming sense of i have to have this and i have to take it into my body and i didn't i never felt anything vis hungry before i've never been that like desiring of something and oh it's crazy and i i just like started thinking ok so i have to paint it was even that it was like i have to paint i know how to paint i remember i can paint it was all these things that came out of this episode of anger from my dad it was really wild so i went on a hunt i went on a hunt and i have a jerry's cataloging because artists have that catalog and i'm looking through it and now i'm looking through it for paint and never looked at it for paint before and because i was a glass artist so i'm looking through it making lists of all the colors so i actually called a friend who was a painter and his name was mike bryce and i asked him what colors to use because i knew there was a ton of colors his colors were the colors i used and loved in my glass work but i didn't have names for them not in pain so he's listing me the colors that he uses and like a cause that i'm going to waste money buying paint that i wouldn't use or would like so those are the colors i start with and i call family and friends all over the place and i said look for a hundred bucks i will paint you a twenty by twenty or a twenty four by twenty four inch painting your choice whatever i didn't realize how crazy this was like now this sounds kind of crazy you know what if it's all on a porch or my daughter's out but everyone was willing and it was amazing in with sixteen hundred dollars i purchased all my supplies six hundred dollars i got from all these commissions to do and i bought those supplies and i just took off with the with the painting and it was intuitive it most definitely was intuitive it was just feeling it and that's how i would describe when i first started teaching into the painting i would say it's not a thinking it's a feeling so you're feeling the waves you're feeling the dogs for you know you're feeling it and the paintings that have come out of teaching with this idea are amazing like to see a nine year old girl paint a portrait of her dog and you feel like the dog's coming out of the painting you know it's amazing because the good stuff so this idea of being an intuitive artist it's about tapping into your inner knowing to express that then to tap into the inner knowing for technique to tap into the inner knowing for the the knowing of the subject you know you're not just painting  an ocean view your experiencing it you're feeling it on to the can you know it's not just a still life you're feeling the petals you're feeling the the glass you're feeling the cool sha and it doesn't matter then like oh do you know how to use color you know you do know like if you feel the passion to be an artist then you know the color to use because you're tapping into a greater than the knowledge available going within is far greater than any knowledge of no matter how many teachers you access no matter how many professionals you talk to the knowing is a huge you can know your way to genius through intuition you will never know your way to genius through teach through classes to classes it's an inner  this idea of intuition it's it's available to everybody not just artists you know it's available to a mother tapping into knowing how to relate to her children or her husband it's into that because that's where all the goods are so that idea that there's an end to it there is no and you know if you will through intuition you get this idea it's inspired action like where to go next what to try next the people who are too truly in their passion and attuned to this intuitiveness there are having a successful business and then selling it off and starting a new one because the idea is that  it's to follow that bliss so on top of that we have what i call the creative abyss and this is the place this is huge like the creative abyss is that ability to know that there is going to be something there to catch you when you step into the nothing now the nothing it's like taking that leap of faith but it's like the creative abyss it's like it's that moment that you have harnessed something new that's never been done and you walk into it you step out into it you create it and the moment that you connect with that something that's never been is the moment that consciousness is expanded and that is that harnessing of the of the something from nothing it's the hardest thing it's the new and we never get to new when we keep doing the same old and in this new there's not any limit it's like it makes me think of the never ending story and how when they stop believing the world shrunk the darkness took it over and that darkness is the it's the it's the nothing of the creative of it so we can expand it as much as we can contract and we contract it by forgetting our truth our truth as creators and then as soon as we remember our truth we expand it we expand the world the possibilities the opportunities we extend consciousness because when i try something new when i explore it makes it available for other people to do the same because they remember they remember then who they are so it's almost a responsibility to go explore it's the it's a responsibility to tap into your truth in your inner knowing in this idea that you were you came to create and came to create and creating it's not just like i said about artistry it's about creating space for relationship creating relationships creating a moment that has never been known before and i had the self know like i fall into these old patterns of being a mommy based on my mommy but then i was like this isn't working i'm not feeling the the gist of these you know the experience of like living life as its highest potential with my daughter and since i've taken and brought awareness to that now i have access like how can i do this for the highest potential of both of us like how can i do this moment with my daughter and i fall into the old traps that every moment i get a new moment to try new again and the same thing with the art work you know you can step into it and create and step out of it and take a breath and then in that breath of we're asking the next question the next question of how could i do this different or would what would be what would what would make this more what i'm thinking those questions are the questions that bring in the answers you know that bring in the next idea so i love expanding and love expand with my art a love expanding with my daughter with my friends it's all to me it's all about that and then i do so much enjoy my abt time where i'm just quiet and enjoying nothing but it's the expansion moments that balance that you know  like it's not it's not the moments of business or doing that balance the ab it's the it's the moments of expansion and the so you add and flow in my quiet in my in my nesting and then i flow in the expansion is really fun