I’m finishing my newest body of work, tentatively titled What the Light Held Together.

I painted this series while preparing to say goodbye to my son as he leaves for college.
Preparing my daughter for her senior year of high school.

 Look at that fun backpack!

There’s a lot in this moment.
Letting go.
Watching them step into the next chapter.
Knowing the day-to-day will change.

So much is unknown. I no longer get to just look at my son to get a pulse on how he’s doing.

This face will be five hours away. 

I think this series is about trusting God to hold the whole story when I can’t see it. Hopefully this blog is a tiny glimpse into my creative process. Sometimes my art is simply about capturing the moment in front of me — like when I paint plein air and respond directly to the light, colors, and shapes I see. Other times, like now, my work is a wrestle with my current life — studio paintings that work out the layers of emotion, memory, and curiosities I have.

For more than 20 years, I’ve kept a tapestry hung backwards in my house. I like the reminder -Most days we see the underside—knots, loose threads, shapes that don’t make sense. The front is ordered and whole, but it isn’t always my view yet. The front of mine is actually a gorgous portrait and its one of my favorite possessions, but still I insist on hanging it to see only the ugly confusing underside. Because isn't that life? We only see the part now, one day we will see the whole of how all of our stories fit together. 

I wish I wasn’t sad to watch him drive away. I think I would like to be one of the moms who only feels excitement and anticipation and has a perfect perspective. But like most of life, there’s tension here today.
I am so deeply sad and will miss him with everything in me — and I am so happy for him to take this next step.

There are many stories like this — moments where we don’t get the full picture. What the Light Held Together is my reminder that beauty can live in that gap. That life is actually lived in the gap-there is no complete picture. That even when I only see the confusing backside of the tapestry, the front is still being woven.

Here is a small glimpse into my new collection. I think only a few will have these broken lines, but it was like something in me NEEDED to paint like this for a while. 

If you’re in a season of this deep awareness of not seeing the whole picture — for whatever reason — I am so with you. I’m learning, slowly, to trust that the Light will hold what I can’t, and to rest in the fact that it was never mine to hold in the first place.

How I Became an Artist (Even Though It Didn’t Look Like It at First)

I’m an artist. And when people hear that, I think they assume I’ve always known it. That I probably grew up with a sketchbook in one hand and a paintbrush in the other. That I visited galleries as a kid and spent hours copying the masters.

Well… maybe. But not really. Not in the way you'd think.

I spent most of my childhood outside. We ran barefoot through the neighborhood, rode our bikes everywhere, caught tadpoles, and named baby ducks. We weren’t trying to be anything—we were just creating whole worlds from nothing. And now that I look back, I see it was all imagination. All early art.

I wasn’t the “art kid.” I didn’t enter contests. I didn’t have a favorite artist. I wanted to be a teacher or a model—which is honestly kind of embarrassing to write now, but probably a product of my 80s upbringing. The point is: I had no clear artistic ambition. Just a deep love of wonder, beauty, and making things.

I took an art class my senior year of high school, just to check off a credit. But something about it felt alive. I remember thinking: Oh. This is what it feels like to wake up to something. I still have my self-portrait collage from that class—and I treasure it.

Even then, I didn’t pursue it. I showed up at the college art department with no portfolio—just hope and a shaky explanation. I was turned away quickly. I didn’t belong, at least not in the way they needed me to.

So I did what a lot of people do. I picked something practical. I studied dental hygiene. It wasn’t creative, but it was solid. Something people understood.

Years later, after I was married and working, my grandfather-in-law invited me to take some art classes with him. I was the youngest person there by decades, sitting beside retirees learning how to paint. We copied other artists’ work—classic landscapes, flowers, Italian villas. I got better. Learned to mix color, pay attention to proportion, maybe even squint at shadows.

But still, I didn’t feel like an artist. I felt like someone who liked art. Someone who could be “pretty good” at it. Someone dabbling.

The truth is, I didn’t start believing I could really be an artist until two things happened:

1. I got a mentor

2. I saw art up close

My mentor told me something simple that changed everything: "Make the work only you can make."
Not what you think others want. Not what sells. Not what looks impressive.
What’s in you.

I had never thought of art that way—like something as personal as DNA. That it could come from your own life, your memory, your faith, your story.

Around the same time, I started traveling more and visiting art museums. I remember seeing original works by Van Gogh, Hodler, and Monet. Paintings I’d only seen in books suddenly felt human—messy, alive, textured, flawed, holy. I stood in front of paintings that made me cry. Not because they were perfect, but because they made me feel something true.

And no—I hadn’t known these artists my whole life. I didn’t grow up dreaming of seeing them in person. But when I did, they stopped me in my tracks. They changed me.

That’s when I realized that art doesn’t have to be tidy or impressive. It just has to be real.

Now I paint as much as I can in the margins of real life—while raising kids, managing a home, and running a business. It’s not romantic or easy. It’s built on discipline, quiet study, and staying awake to the beauty around me. I paint voraciously. I read and research and sketch. I keep learning.

I didn’t become an artist all at once. I became one slowly—through detours and surprises, through copywork and curiosity, through mentors and museums, through motherhood and faith.

And maybe that’s the real story behind most artists.
Not instant talent.
But the long, quiet work of becoming.

thanks for listening-Amanda