The Story of The Northern Waters Series

July 2020 update: This story was written over a year ago, before our 2020 move to BC. Read about our new adventure here.

I love learning new skills, and I recently tried the popular resin art technique of making waves and seafoam. Even after living in California for 15 years, all my works came out looking like the waters around Vancouver Island - dark, crashing waves and choppy water. I decided to stop trying to make perfect California waves, and embrace my British Columbia roots.

My husband and I both grew up as island kids, on different islands in BC. We daydream of growing my business enough to move back and live on a little island again someday when we are older.

In our version of events, built over the 19 years we’ve been together, we are an old couple in a little house “off the grid” in the Gulf islands.  We have solar panels, a well, big twisty old cedar trees, and an art studio that supports us both. I paint, and he maintains my website and builds science contraptions for my studio. It rains all winter, but we are used to it.

Once every few weeks we get in our camper van and take the ferry to “town” on the mainland, where we buy groceries, drop off the new paintings to be listed and shipped, and pick up shipments of art supplies.

I’m at the phase of my career where painting is a small part of the work. I think of that island dream every time I have to do something hard or unfamiliar - raising my prices, figuring out state tax codes, speaking in videos, negotiating image licensing, writing. I am truly grateful to make a living as an artist, and all these pieces are parts of that whole, even if painting is the only part I’m good at. I’m doing these things so that we can be that funny old couple on the island someday. 

This is my Functional Art style celebrating that dream, inspired by the wake from the ferry.