Hello from Deep Winter
A snowy reflective post, and welcoming rest during turbulent times
Hello dear readers. Thank you as always for being here. I want to start every post from now on with a thank you. I listened to a great interview on the Wiser Than Me podcast last year with Patti Smith, and she talked about how she tends to just thank everything all of the time, out loud. She thanks her toothbrush, the water running in the sink, her dinner, her driveway, etc. I love this recognition and easy way of bringing presence and appreciation to truly everything. I also love the animacy of everything that this speaks to. So I have adopted this practice myself when I remember it and feel love for what I am in conversation with. I have started thanking my showers every time I get in. I thank the sunrise and the sunset that I get to watch from this perch I am at in the mountains. I thank my food and my kitchen and my dog and my flannel bed sheets. And I thank you all, very much so, for taking the time to read these words that I share with you here.
What a start to 2025 we have had collectively. The world is heavy with ongoing grief. I am not just thanking all of the time, but also praying to the winds on the west coast to calm themselves. I am praying to the people losing their homes that they find support and care and come together in the ways that only situations like this can bring on. I think back to Hurricane Helene in the fall on the east coast, and now the fires on the west coast, and the same questions come to me, “How long will it take for us to learn? How much life must be sacrificed for us to change our ways?” I do not know the answer, but it seems that emergency preparedness, mutual aid, community building, and wide-open hearts are all ways we can engage in the climate/war crises moving forwards.
I have been up here in the Allegheny mountains of Virginia for just a week now. My husband, pup and I moved out here to Highland county to try living rurally for a season and tip-toeing around what it might feel like if we did this kind of thing more permanently. Our home in Richmond has been a gift and it has felt time for a change for some time now. I’m not sure if I have ever been in more of a season of the unknown in my whole entire adult life.
As much adventure as I have been privileged to have had and bold enough to make in my life, I have always also been such a planner with it all. I’ve known to an extent the next steps ahead to get me to where I am going, even if I didn’t know what would await me in those places. But right now, right here, I truly have no idea. We left Richmond, rented our home out for a few months, and don’t have definitive plans to return and feel we are on the precipice of the next great adventure/shift/change. And so, here we are stepping out just far enough to try something for a few months and hoping that in that time of being and resting, something will guide us to take another next step.
Rest is such an important part of the process. We often think of it as a waste of time because our culture is sick with productivity and treats us as if we are worthless when we aren’t striving (what an awful lie). Rest is the way to receiving. We can’t receive when we are constantly pushing up, moving forward, going fast. But in rest, there is reflection. There is nourishment. There is strength gathering. In rest, answers can come rather than us going to chase them. And perhaps, that is where some of us are supposed to be right now, in these turbulent unknown times. I feel that personally and I also feel it collectively.
Sitting with these questions, I have also been sitting and reflecting on my offerings here online and in person, and I want to share with you all on some decisions I have come to for my future sharings and commitments with my work.
I was going to switch my whole website from squarespace to shopify, because I am told that shopify is much better for e-commerce and for tracking people’s buying data to better target them with ads through meta. I listened to this incredible interview with Jia Tolentino on Talk Easy and she got me really thinking about surveillance capitalism (I didn’t even know that this term existed until this interview). I don’t want people to come to my site to buy my work because I am manipulating them to do so through sneaky ads and mining their internet histories for their deepest desires. I want people to come to my work genuinely, through a place of organic interest. It’s tough, it’s not like squarespace is an angel hosting platform either, but I felt very clear that I will not be switching platforms just because I want to make more sales. That has never been the reason I make the work that I do, and I am incredibly grateful for the financial support that comes from you all purchasing my work, but I don’t need to turn it into a fast money making machine. We have enough of those in the world already, art should be spared.
I am going to be sharing a whole lot more on here, and moving more and more away from meta (facebook, instagram). I don’t align with the company and find their tactics equally as manipulative and ethically askew. While I have so loved connecting with real people in real life through meeting first on instagram, and gaining so much inspiration from other artists, herbalists, and makers, there is no longer enough motivation for me to keep wanting to be as active there. I am hoping I will phase out of it completely sometime within this year.
I am hoping to teach more in-person workshops and show at more in-person markets this year. It’s a lot of prep work to do these, but they feel more fulfilling on a personal level. I am an artist and love the moments when I am in my private creative space painting or drawing, but I also truly love people and connecting with you all in real life. I want to bridge that gap more and bring creativity into spaces where I get to talk about your interests, your art practices, your love of vegetables and plants and food.
My work will be more focused on plants this year. I can’t predict everything that I will create already, but I do know that I have a strong interest in creating visual altars to honor some medicinal and magical plants I have learned about through my ongoing herbalism studies. I took a poisonous plant herbalism course this past fall with Kathryn Solie and fell in love with a few new-to-me plants including henbane and yew tree. I’ve been accepted into Motherwort and Rose’s Tears of the Gods herbalism course that starts next month, exploring herbalism through the lens of magic, folklore, and myth, in relation to grief, death and shapeshifting. This stuff lights me up so much and I am excited to see how it inspires my painting practice too.
New work space, WIP of a piece I started last year I want to do more collaborative work with change makers, activists and worthwhile causes. Reach out if you need an artist on deck! ;)
I want to be more frugal. Part of why we are living more rurally was the appeal of living a less consumer-driven life. It is so easy in a city to spend money. Out here, you really need to plan your trips to town and otherwise, you create from what you have. I love the creativity that frugality offers, and the way it brings you back to simple pleasures. I think back to the times in my adult life when my husband and I were more flush with cash, and how we would treat ourselves and others way more often to lavish restaurant meals or nicer trips, etc. And to be honest, I don’t miss or lack for any of that. I love cooking a homemade meal for family or friends. I love baking for my neighbors. I love taking hours to really enjoy a process rather than rushing through. I love slow travel and staying in a place long enough to get a sense of it. I really enjoyed
talking about what it really looks like to live a frugal life and will be taking notes along the way of my own journey with spending less money.I want to create for the sake of creating, for the sake of play, and not for the outcome. This is a tough one but aligns a lot with me staying in the unknown and waiting to receive rather than trying to control. Life is inviting us to stretch our capacities in more ways than one, and imagination is a really vital one. For me this means spending more time in the discovery and the research, without having a plan, and also creating for the sake of just making something because it feels good to make something. It also means spending more time in the doing and the making, and less time on screens or distractions that take me away from that real fertile place.
And lastly, but most importantly of all- I want to connect more with you all. This space is really important to me, and I would love to build this community more. I want to leave these posts with a question or two, to offer more engagement in the comments below. So please consider these questions and I would so love to receive your response below.
Thank you SO much for being here. Reach out, I love hearing from you.
What brings you unadulterated, pure JOY right now?
What is something you want to learn this year? A new skill? A new recipe? A new language?! What is sparking your curiosity to learn more?
PS. If you are a paid subscriber, your perks are still active! 15% off my online shop always (with your special discount code) plus first dibs on workshops, classes, new paintings, etc. Thank you immensely for your financial support. It allows me to have the space to take more rest and to create more from that well resourced place of being.
Loved this newsletter and share the same feelings on a lot, but especially as it pertains to the use of meta. Unplugging from online platforms feels like a silent rebellion that will help us return to a more intentional and simpler (in a good way) life.
Beautifully put. Thank you so much for sharing. I've been pondering about my life and my business lately, too. It's nice to see another artist's thoughts and intentions.