Growing up in coastal Maine, my childhood was shaped by my parents’ love of building rock walls. They were self-employed and self-sufficient, and somehow there was always a place that needed a wall. As a family, we gathered stones from the landscape and stacked them one by one until they held. It was part engineering, part intuition, and always dependent on collaboration. I didn’t know it then, but those walls gave me one of my first lessons in what it means to make something. You have to find the balance. You have to be strong enough to lift and patient enough to listen.

As I grew older, life did what life does. The creative part of me was set aside while other paths came first. Then came motherhood full, consuming, beautiful, and relentless. We made art that piled up on the refrigerator and filled drawers. My kids dug holes and dreamed, and we read countless books to fill our days. There was curiosity and chaos, tears and so much love.

Then one day, my youngest child started kindergarten, and I stepped into a void. Who was I without someone needing me every second? It was time to dig deep and begin wondering for myself again. I remembered what it felt like to lift something heavy with my hands and place it exactly where it needed to go. The rock walls of my childhood reminded me that I was strong. They also reminded me that a wall only holds if you are willing to take it apart and begin again when something isn’t right. Returning to art was not a hobby. It was not a side project. It was the thing that put me back together.

I paint the objects most people walk past: stones and seashells, old tools, feathers found along a trail, objects discovered at yard sales or pulled from the back of an antique shop. I am drawn to things that hold quiet histories, objects that have already lived, carrying the weight of time and memory without asking anyone to notice.

That is what I want my work to do. I want it to slow you down. I want my paintings to live in your home and remind you, on an ordinary Tuesday morning, that there is beauty in the things you almost overlooked. That the life you are living right now is already worth painting.

I never stopped being that child, learning how to stack stones until something held. I just finally understood what I was building.