"Paris isn't Paris because of the city. It's the people you find inside it." What Paris Actually Feels Like I hated Paris the first time. I want to be honest about that because the mythology around Paris is so thick that admitting you hated it feels almost like a character flaw. But I did. It was overwhelming and loud and I couldn't speak much french and everyone seemed to already know where they were going and I did not. What changed it for me was the people. Paris isn't Par

"He lost interest. I didn't." Learning Guitar Badly and Why I Keep Going I started learning guitar during COVID because my son wanted to learn. He lost interest quickly. I didn't. This is probably a personality trait at this point. I pick things up because someone else is interested and then they leave and I stay. The guitar sat in the corner after he moved on and I kept picking it up whenever I had a spare moment, figuring out chords, playing badly, playing slightly less bad

"The market corrected me." The Painting That Wouldn't Sell My “Winter Tree" painting had been sitting in my shop for a while. Nobody touched it. I finally put it on sale at $35 and still no one looked at it. I had painted it during a Fort McMurray deep freeze. The kind that seeps into your bones and it physically hurts your face every time you go outside. If you ever felt anything minus thirty or below you know what I'm talking about. It's the kind of cold that makes you ques

"The first time I tried to find Grease Monkey I never made it on time. Budapest kept interrupting me." The Budapest Garden He stood me up again in Budapest. I won't get into the details because they don't really matter and also because he reads these occasionally and I'd like to keep him humble. What matters is I was alone in Budapest with a free afternoon I hadn't planned for. The normal thing to do would have been to go back to the apartment and sulk or go on a rant in a fi

"If I hadn't put my heart out there despite every reasonable objection, I would never have found that garden." The Budapest Garden He stood me up again in Budapest. I won't get into the details because they don't really matter and also because he reads these occasionally and I'd like to keep him humble. What matters is I was alone in Budapest with a free afternoon I hadn't planned for. The normal thing to do would have been to go back to the apartment and sulk or go on a rant

"People at the Fort McMurray art market call me the fruit lady. I've made peace with it." Why I Paint Fruit People at the Fort McMurray art market call me the fruit lady. I smile every time I say that. I didn't set out to be the fruit lady. It happened gradually, an orange here, some grapes there, a bowl of cherries that turned into a series. At some point the pattern became undeniable and now it's just part of who I am as a painter. The fruit lady. I actually quite enjoy it.