My first friend was my crayon box. My mother says "from the moment I could grasp a crayon" I have been creating and that is pretty much what I remember too. I remember, in the glimpses that I can, sitting at special small coloring table at my Nana's house as a toddler. I named the colors before I could read their crayon assigned names, and would eagerly day dream by mixing the colors together and in different ways. My small world was that much more enchanting thanks to coloring.

Nana's Garden

My early love for coloring grew along with a budding interest in plant life fostered by my loved ones. Nana's house had what I deemed the most beautiful garden full of Petunias, Snapdragons, Marigolds, Salvia, and planted special for me, some pink Begonias.

I grew up around plants, we visited my grandparents where my maternal grandmother had flowers so big they reached the eave of their single story home; standing tall in contrast to their hills of vegetables. I still delight in the idea that she would drive around with a shovel in her car just incase she came across an interesting plant that may add to her collection or line her pockets with seed pods she came across.

Each Spring my mother brought me along to choose plants for potting, teaching me how to tell which plants where healthy. My paternal grandparents had geraniums leading up their driveway and a vegetable gardens where I would pick out tomatoes or cucumbers for our salads. Both my mother and all my grandparents had a knack for growing Christmas Cactus- these very same plants are still blooming today.

This coloring book is something that represents many of the things that led me to become artist; and what better way to share my own journey and love for color than to have a book to share with others to explore on their own.

To create the coloring book, you would think that picking out sketches and putting them together in a book would be a simple endeavor, we certainly did at first. As it turns out, having a lot of choices means actually making one is a little harder to do.

I've been creating floral imagery for years, naturally I assumed that selecting from them would be a cinch. Well, a month went by and I was STILL working out what I was happy with, redrawing some, adding to others. I wanted to keep the original form as true as possible, while also adding some line and detail to make it more interesting to work with. With the imagery finally settled, it was time for a decision on materials.

For many more weeks the "art manager" and I obsessed over paper samples (apparently there is a difference between the paper used for No. 12 cover page and No.12 card stock and No.12 text), ruminated over the formatting and page order, and created other pages that I had not considered before, like the title page and introduction. When it was all done, and ready to send off to printing, I started having doubts. Was creating this book really worth it? Will it represent my work well, but also be welcoming for someone to actually... color or paint with it? I was not going to be certain until they were in my hands, so after 3 or 4 rounds of proof approvals, off they went to print.

When the books finally arrived, I opened up the box, and felt such relief. It was done and I am excited to share them with others.