In the summer of 1992 my mom and I took a watercolor painting class at my alma mater Drake High. I played around a little with painting small vases of flowers from life for a few months, but then hardly painted for nearly a decade. Life changes (divorce, living abroad, meeting and marrying my husband, Joe) brought me to a more collected and creative place and in 2000 I began to paint again. I took a few workshops and adult ed classes, one community college credit class on color – but no other art training. I decided that I would finish every painting I started – finding my way through all the parts that I struggled with.  This has turned out to be the best way to learn. I started small – a quarter sheet of watercolor paper – and quickly progressed to painting on full sheets. But, my painting time was quite sporadic –  work would lie untouched for months. In 2004 I was faced with an enormous disappointment – that I’d not have my own children in this lifetime.  It was unthinkable that my life would not include having kids – I am a born mother.  My response to the grief was to pray for the energy and inspiration to adopt, or to be given something else to that would fill the meaning void in my life.  At first it seemed that something else was life coaching and I enrolled in a coach training program in 2005. In the winter of 2006, just as I was completing my training and planning to build a coaching practice, my friend Eleanor Harvey asked me if I wanted to do Marin Open Studios together the following May. I replied with “that means I have to sell my art, right?” She told me, yes, that was the idea!  At that time, my pieces were very precious – they took me forever to do and they were my babies! But a voice told me that if I wanted more art to come through me, I needed to let them go. That spring I jumped in to preparing for open studios with a vengeance. I had my art reproduced by Steve Kimball with Light Rain in San Rafael (soon after I went to work there for nearly 5 years!).  And I had sets of greeting cards made. Open Studios brought an overwhelming response to my work, inspiring me to paint more and search out other ways to show and sell my artwork – completly eclipsing my plans to be a life coach. Since late summer 2011, I’ve been sharing what I’ve learned with weekly watercolor groups and this has become as central to my life as making my own work.  Because I am largely self-taught, I initially had no idea what I knew – painting is such an intuitive process for me. I’ve discovered that if you put a painter and her or his work and questions in front of me, just what is needed comes spilling out of me. My experience now is that I was born to do this.  The part of me that was drawn to life coaching informs how I teach, bringing me full circle.  I’m so clear now that I have indeed been given the “something else.”  What I do is filled with purpose and meaning and I feel so privileged to be spending my life this way.