At the beginning of the summer I decided I was going to shift some priorities around in order to live the life I wanted. The major thing I wanted to prioritize was time for me to be creative. My entire life I have felt drawn to art and creativity, but I never fully prioritized this desire because I always felt like it wasn’t important enough. I found ways to incorporate art into my life under the guise of some sort of productive or practical purpose. As a child I would say I wanted to be and architect instead of artist because it was more palatable to the adults in my life – “no starving artist here, I’ll be an architect!”. In college I initially majored in engineering (hello practical) and minored in art “for fun”. When I graduated and found I was unsatisfied with my job I went back to school for art education (art, but with the security of a job).

It was through a period of time spent in therapy that I began to recognize this narrative I had spun for myself about creativity not being important was incredibly untrue. I was starving myself of something I desperately needed more of in my life.

And so, at the beginning of this summer I started painting again. I turned our spare bedroom into a makeshift studio, laid out all of my supplies, and made it a priority to paint every single day. Even if it was for fifteen minutes. I started an instagram account to hold myself accountable and reflect on my progress.

What started as a way to get back to myself, has turned into the beginning of a business. I am opening an online shop, called August Jude, named after my boys. They were the catalyst for me starting this self-discovery journey, so it’s only fitting.

My debut collection for the shop is The Clouds collection, a series of 24 oil on canvas paintings. They are all fairly abstract in nature and full of bright colors. I wanted to choose a subject that would have endless inspiration, but also be abstract enough in nature that I could get in the groove of painting quickly and not get bogged down by details. Clouds as a subject matter freed me up to play with color and brush strokes and really just find my rhythm of painting in short spurts of time. I think it’s also very fitting for clouds to be my first collection as they are symbolic of all of the daydreaming that went into opening this little art business. Hopefully they inspire you to keep your head in the clouds, too.

The originals will be available (each with a maple floating frame) as well as fine art glicee prints of each painting on sustainable bamboo paper. Glicee prints are high quality art prints done with archival inks on archival paper. That means they will last you more than a lifetime and not fade. The paper is buttery soft, yet thick and sturdy and is made from sustainable bamboo. I’m super excited about these prints and hope you love them as much as I do!

The collection will be available at December 8th at noon CST. Thanks for all your love and support!