The Art of Becoming Whole

I believe life leaves marks.

Love. Loss. Grief. Desire. Relationships. Disappointment. Beauty. The things we chose and the things we never would have chosen.

We carry these experiences in our stories, but we also carry them in our bodies. Sometimes long before we have words for what has happened, something within us already knows.

This is where my work begins.

I am interested in what happens when the invisible is given form.

When grief becomes a color.

When fear becomes a shape.

When a memory becomes a mark.

When something we have carried silently is finally placed onto paper or canvas where it can be witnessed.

I believe there are things within us that words alone cannot reach.

So we create.

My work is inspired by the spirit of kintsugi and the beauty of wabi-sabi—the cracks, the weathering, the unfinished places, the evidence that something has been lived.

I work with earth pigments, raw linen, plaster, charcoal, wax, found papers, natural textures, and imperfect surfaces because I don't believe restoration needs to look polished.

I don't erase the first marks.

I work with them.

Layer upon layer, what has been becomes part of what is being created.

My Christian faith gives this practice its deepest meaning.

I believe God is the ultimate Creator and Restoration Artist.

I believe we were created whole, that life has a way of fragmenting what God created, and that restoration is not about becoming someone else.

It is a return.

A remembering.

A coming home to who we were created to be.

This belief became the foundation of Artful Storywork™, the art form I created at the intersection of story, art, embodiment, and spiritual formation.

Sometimes I make the work alone.

Sometimes I invite a woman to make the first marks.

She brings her story, her words, her colors, her body, her questions.

I witness.

I listen.

I ask questions.

We create.

And sometimes I carry what we have begun back into my studio, where I continue working until a finished piece emerges from what we have made together.

The goal is never to make the story prettier than it was.

The goal is to tell the truth and discover what beauty can be brought forth from it.

I call this the art of becoming whole.

Because I don't believe our stories need to be erased before something beautiful can be created.

The cracks can remain.

The history can remain.

The first marks can remain.

Nothing is wasted.

And even here,

beauty can be found.