In Full Bloom: The Story Behind the Collection

Winter has never been my favorite season, but I’ve come to respect it. It’s a good time to read more, think more, and pay attention to what needs strengthening. There’s a kind of growth that only happens when things are quieter and the pace naturally slows. It doesn’t look impressive while it’s happening, but it matters.

Somewhere along the way, my middle school son gave this idea a name. He calls it the winter arch—the stretch of time when you’re doing the work that no one sees, training without a season, building strength without an audience. It sounds very official coming from someone who still needs reminders to bring a jacket, but he’s not wrong. Winter is where the real work happens. Spring just gets the credit.

When the weather finally starts to warm, I notice it on walks through the neighborhood. Years ago, when my kids were little, we’d head out with the stroller and I’d stop to admire the first flowers coming up—the early color after months of gray. It felt like a shift. Not a dramatic change, just a reminder that something had been building beneath the surface.

As the kids get older, I think more about when they were little. I remember we quickly planted bulbs one spring, and now they return every year, somehow multiplying along the way. It’s funny how something so ordinary can become a lasting source of beauty and memory.

That idea lives in this work.

These paintings come from months of winter studio work—reading, refining, letting ideas take shape before they’re ready to be seen. They’re meant to celebrate both the beauty of spring—its color, warmth, and vitality—and the quiet, sometimes unglamorous work of becoming.

I hope this collection serves as an invitation to notice that process in your own life. A reminder that we are always becoming—often in ways we don’t fully recognize until much later.