For this book illustrated with watercolor, gouache, and ink, I focused on creating messy art that challenged my perfectionist tendencies. I aimed for “playful” instead of "good" and let paint drip and seep onto other pages. I wanted to see how I'd handle more chaos and how it'd change me.

My nine-year-old daughter Madeleine and I created this painting of Kalanchoe flowers together, our first time collaborating on an art piece. The process was fun for both of us and an interesting experiment in blending two distinct styles into one artwork.

“Strawberry Season” is my third painting in a series about conflicting emotions, darkness and light. I made this painting as a birthday gift for my father-in-law who, over the years, has grown and harvested buckets upon buckets of strawberries, often cooked into strawberry jam and canned by my mother-in-law.

Finishing this heavy book about color and light was such an accomplishment, I decided to write this blog to highlight useful things I learned for fear I'd forget them otherwise.

Last month, my Opa (my maternal grandfather) passed away at age 99. As a tribute to his life, I painted this portrait of him sitting on his favorite bench in British Columbia, gazing at the beautiful mountains of Creston Valley.

Stowed away in a little box, I have a set of 20+ journals from the beginning of my marriage, starting in June 2011. I'm slowly recreating them with illustrations and curation, giving them a second life and giving me endless inspiration for creating art with gouache, a type of paint I wanted to try out.

“Balcony Sunbeam” is my second painting in a series called Fear/Love about conflicting emotions, darkness and light. It was inspired by the little balcony we had when my daughter was a toddler and relished being outside in the sun.

This painting is part of a series entitled "Fear/Love" which explores conflicting emotions and plays with darkness and light. Since I enjoy reading about the process behind art, I've started this blog to share the process behind my own work, beginning with this portrait.