Grit & Beauty — The Story These Paintings Tell
(Part 4 of the "Grit & Beauty: Notes from the Studio" series)
There’s a moment in every creative process when things begin to gather. What starts as individual pieces — made in solitude, often wrestled into being — slowly begin to feel like they belong to each other.
That’s what happened with Grit & Beauty.
This wasn’t a series I planned in advance. It grew out of the work. It emerged from a year (more than a year, really) of showing up to the studio in all kinds of emotional weather — carrying whatever I was holding that day — and letting the paint, the marks, the layers, speak for me.
And now, standing back and seeing all 15 paintings together, I realize: this is not just a series of paintings. This is a record of becoming.
The Wish To Be Rooted, 20×20, Mixed media on canvas
Grit & Beauty — A Series About Living in the Tension
This series is about contrast. It’s about complexity. It’s about holding multiple things at once — joy and grief, softness and strength, surrender and fight. It’s about resilience, not as a clean or polished thing, but as something layered, raw, imperfect, and deeply human.
Where there is beauty, there is grit.
Where there is grit, there is grace.
Every painting in this series carries its own energy — its own story — but together, they tell a larger truth about what it means to live fully awake in the world.
The Paintings Themselves
There are 15 works in Grit & Beauty — each one built over time, layer by layer, mark by mark. Some came quickly. Others fought me the whole way. Some feel light and full of breath. Others hold weight, history, and shadow.
And that’s the point.
This is a body of work about tension — not as something to fix or resolve — but as a place to live.
I will be sharing all of these paintings together for the first time at Life Is Better — an exhibit opening May 2nd, 2025 at NoName Gallery. It feels incredibly meaningful that this series — born out of both struggle and celebration — will hang in a show dedicated to joy, memory, and connection.
Because life really is better when we allow room for the full experience — the beauty and the grit.
What I Hope You Feel
If you stand in front of these works — in the gallery or even here online — I hope you feel seen. I hope you feel invited to bring your whole self. The complicated, the hopeful, the tired, the joyful parts of you. All of it belongs.
That’s what this work has taught me:
Nothing is wasted.
Nothing is too messy.
Nothing needs to be perfect to be beautiful.
This series is proof.
Coming Next
In the final entry of this blog series, I’ll share why I keep painting — even when it’s hard. Even when I doubt. Even when I wonder if it matters.
I’ll tell you what calls me back to the canvas — and what I hope to keep saying through this work, for as long as I’m able.
Until then — thank you for walking with me through this process. Thank you for showing up.
We are all works in progress.
We are all grit and beauty.
