It’s titled ‘Happiness is a Bouquet of Flowers’ because simply put, that’s how I feel.

Flowers make you smile. Bring you joy. My husband says I’m not very sentimental, but I am forever stopping on a walk to take photos of flowers over taking photos of people. 🙃

A bouquet of flowers lifts someone’s heart when they’re feeling sad. It’ a living gift of joy.

This painting is my last of the abstract expression, palette knife series created for the Rebel Hearts exhibition.

It came after the grief, after the hope, after the confusion, after the excitement and after the heartfelt expansion I felt.

I let everything out of me (after this mirror meditation) and I had poured out all my grief and devastation into Glitter in the Muck.

What was left was a heart full joy. As I chose my colour palette - I chose colours that made me feel uplifted, light and airy.

Like all of us, we have a past. That past could have been beautiful… or it could have been hard, ugly and dark. With each new day, we get to choose what our life looks like moving forward. The past is still there… and needs to be acknowledged and accepted… but we get to create anything we want as we move forward. Isn’t that amazing?

We can be anything we want - from today. It all starts with a single thought. A single action.

Fast-forward to 2024 - this painting has been hanging in my hallway the past 5 year. It was a piece that I never felt had reached it’s full potential - and so as I was gathering up my paints and my canvases to come down to my studio in McCrae for the end of the Christmas holidays, I decided to bring this painting along in case I was inspired to breathe more life into it.

I have titled it ‘Bringing the Past Into the Present’ because it is very much so. Bringing this past creation more into life by adding a lot of layering with the palette knife; resulting in brighter and more vibrant energy and colours. Just in the same way that I’m bringing all of the bits of my past and using them as the fire to fuel my present life.