In the vast, rolling countryside of western Pennsylvania, where cornfields stretched endlessly and forests whispered secrets, I was a middle child searching desperately for my voice. My childhood was a beautiful struggle—a constant quest to be heard, to be seen, to express the complex universe that lived inside my mind.
Childhood me, holding my dearest guinea pig named Peeker’s.
Art didn’t just find me; it saved me. While others gossiped and chattered about small-town happenings, I would disappear into my own world of creation. Every scrap of paper became precious—restaurant menus, crumpled receipts, forgotten napkins—all transformed into windows to my soul whenever inspiration struck like lightning.
“Do you have a pen?” These words, my mother tells me with tears in her eyes, have echoed through our home since I could barely reach the kitchen table. “She was just two,” she often recounts, her voice soft with wonder, “when she first held that paintbrush. I cried watching her. It was beautiful—almost sacred. I couldn’t believe what was flowing from such tiny hands.” Even then, before I fully understood myself, art wasn’t merely something I did—it was the language my heart spoke when words failed me.
Me wearing a “Bee Kind” yellow hat, while holding a tiny banana in the shape of a smile.
The universe blessed me with a unique perspective, though society might call it learning disabilities. Every concept that others grasped with ease required me to climb mountains of effort. But this struggle—this beautiful, painful struggle—gifted me something precious: a way of seeing the world that belongs only to me. My art doesn’t just reflect life; it translates it into something others can feel, not just observe.
I’ve chased inspiration with a fervor that borders on madness. My fingers have gone numb in winter’s bite, rain has soaked my sketchbooks, and still, I create. Because not creating? That’s the only impossibility I recognize. I’ve yearned to embody the romantic notion of a “true artist,” while simultaneously fearing the vulnerability of stepping beyond familiar shores.
Art has been my faithful companion, my truest friend, my most honest mirror. From the little girl begging for pens to the woman who faces life’s deepest challenges with creativity as her shield and sword, this journey has shaped every fiber of my being. It’s in the way I see sunrise colors, how I feel music in my bones, how I translate emotion into something tangible.
And I wouldn’t trade this artist’s heart—with all its messy, beautiful complexity—for anything in this world.