Introducing the Breakthrough Collection...

It was April 8, 2024, and I happened to be flying into Toronto on the day of a solar eclipse.

I was on my way to a creative retreat, and a few of us were meeting at the airport to drive the rest of the way together. One of the women in our group really wanted to witness the eclipse from inside the path of totality, so we decided to join her adventure and drove an hour out of our way to be in it.

I remember pulling over to the side of a country road with strangers who had stopped to witness the same thing. We got out and stood as the sky slowly deepened to an eerie shade. The street lamps flickered on, one by one. Everything grew quiet. We slipped on our eclipse glasses and waited , still unable to look fully at the sun. Almost there.

And then my friend said, Okay, now! Take off your glasses.

We fumbled them off our faces and looked up.

It was more beautiful than I can describe. My skin prickled as I took it in. All that remained visible was the corona of the sun, the pearly white atmosphere of plasma circling the dark center. The part of the sun that is only visible during a solar eclipse. 

But the moment that surprised me most came at the very end of totality. The instant the sun broke past the edge of the moon again, it became too bright to look at. I longed to keep looking, so I slipped my glasses back on, and only the smallest pinprick of light was visible through them. I was surprised by this, and so I took them off again. And even that pinprick was too bright for my eyes to behold.

In that moment I thought of Moses, asking for a glimpse of God. How he was placed in the cleft of a rock and allowed only to see God's back as He passed, because no one can look fully on His glory and live.

I have been thinking about light ever since. The longing for it, the need for it, the way it breaks through, even on our darkest days.

This past year held its own kind of dimness for me. For more than a year, I have been getting more frequent and intense migraines, until most days carried at least a headache and the bad days came two or three times a week.

It started me on a long search for the root cause, through blood tests and a glucose monitor and an elimination diet that asked me to set down some of my favorite things for a while. (Coffee included. We will not speak of it.) Slowly, the fog began to lift. Most of those migraines have since disappeared, and I am so deeply thankful.

I tell you this because it is woven into these paintings, even where you cannot see it. So much of this past year was spent going about ordinary life while quietly looking for glimpses of light. Asking it to break through the pain and frustration. Trusting that it would find its way in, the way it always seems to.

That is what this collection became.

 

There was a fun home project running alongside all of this, too. Over the winter, my friend and interior designer Tara Dennis helped me reimagine our living room, and the whole thing became unexpected fuel for the collection.

Before I picked up a single brush, I built a mood board around the pieces that were on their way to us: a deep olive velvet sofa, a pair of ochre linen armchairs, and a hand-knotted wool rug she designed for the space. Those warm, earthy tones became the palette for this entire body of work.

 

 

I painted most of the collection inside a grove of trees— at least in my mind. There is something about standing among aspen and birch that feels like stepping into a cathedral. They rise like a choir with their arms lifted, roots intertwined beneath the soil, more beautiful together than any one of them could be alone.

The morning light comes cascading through branch and leaf, the way it falls through stained glass, scattering dappled patterns and swaying shadow across the forest floor. In an open field, I would have to look away from the sun. But here, half hidden behind the branches, I can almost look at it, like during the eclipse. I am always searching for one more glimpse.

The other thread running through this work is the trillium. I love how they turn their faces toward the sun and reach for it with everything they have, pushing up through cold soil and last year's fallen leaves to bloom. I want to be like them. Reaching, unfurling, opening toward the Light. 

 

 

Everything good becomes more beautiful in the light. Even the ordinary, when it is illuminated, becomes something to marvel at.

As you scroll through these photos, you'll see the paintings at home in our newly made living room, against the olive, the ochre, and the wool, warm and cozy, the way I hope they will feel in your space, too. Some are larger originals meant to anchor a room and fill it with that quiet streaming light. There will also be a dozen small framed studies, intimate enough to tuck into a reading nook or a gallery wall, each one its own small glimpse. They are all about the same thing: the light always finding its way through.

 

 

The Breakthrough Collection releases on June 30 at 12pm EST. Consider this your early invitation to come and gaze at the light with me. To bask in it the way the trillium do. 

And if you'd like to see the full collection, including the studies with all the close-ups, sizes, and pricing before release day, hop on my email list here.

With wonder,