.Before I was an artist I was a writer.

As a young girl I loved to read, and my love of writing came soon after. If I had a superpower then, it was in my ability to paint vivid and stirring images with well-chosen words.

Now, I spend more time with a paintbrush in my hand, rather than a pen and paper. But I still want the same thing I wanted before. Words without emotion are utilitarian. Paintings without emotion are flat and dull. I want you to feel something.

Lately, I’ve been obsessed with roses. I’ve been painting them over and over. Roses are symbolic of so many things. In my paintings. sometimes the focus stays on the rose and sometimes it goes beyond.

What’s more, some of my new paintings seem like part of a story; maybe just a single scene from a larger narrative.

I happen to love stories. I’m going to tell you the story of my first rose painting.

I hope it makes you feel something.

I see the man in the moon, and his likeness, broken into thousands of tiny sparkling jewels on the water below.

I smell the rich heady scent of a wall of red, red roses. It looms above me in the darkness, a few petals here and there catching the moonlight.

I taste the salt air on my lips and the ocean breeze whips my hair across my face. I hear the waves lapping at the shore.

I look left and right. I turn around. Where is he? I am alone in the moonlight. I wait for the one who sees what I see, feels what i feel.

It’s only me….and the man in the moon.