I grew up in a small town in Texas, in a dome house, along with 3 siblings, cats, goats, chickens, prickly pear cactus and fire ants. Our parents encouraged us to do what we love. They said, “You may never be rich, but you’ll be happy.” My love was always art.
I attended the University of Texas in Austin. Unfortunately my art professors were so focused on the concept behind art that they never thought to teach us how to draw/paint/you name it. Nevertheless, I graduated.
I met and married my husband (David) my last year of college (acquiring 2 step-daughters in the process, Sophie and Maddie). David kindly supported me and my art after graduation, and I spent about 5 years doing one giant bad painting after another (since one thing I did learn in college was you had to paint big), and being thoroughly depressed about it.
Apparently I learned a bit on my own through trial and error, because eventually I got into my favorite gallery in Austin, TX. Unfortunately I never earned what could be considered a living (even later, when I was in 7 galleries!). A couple of years later David and I adopted our son, Jacob (below, left, 5 days old). I didn’t paint much after that, until he was 1½ and a friend sent me an article about daily painting.
The idea was to do one small painting each day, post it on a blog, and sell it in auction. I started painting during Jacob’s naps, and quickly fell in love with the process! I slowly built up a following and started selling my daily paintings. I was finally making a living with my art! After about 6 months I got my first invitation to teach, then my second, and soon had sold-out workshops all over the US and Canada.
In 2006 my husband and I started a small online gallery (Daily Paintworks) featuring 12 daily painters, but after he was laid off in 2008, David decided to make it something more artists could benefit from. Now we have quite a few more artists, host our own auctions, tutorials, monthly contests and challenges, and more.
In 2011 we lost our house in a forest fire (a lot of people helped us through that, for which we are eternally grateful!!). We now live in Missoula, MT. We are having quite an adventure here.
I have created several books - collections of 100 of my favorite daily paintings in each. I have also written an instructional book called Daily Painting, available through Amazon. I also have a collection of ArtBytes (online tutorials) for purchase (some are free - check them out). And here are some answers to frequently asked questions. Thanks for looking.
