I was born into an environment that didn’t know how to meet my needs as a highly sensitive person. I always felt different, so my quest became to fit in. 

For 10 years of my life, I shut down my creativity, because I was caught in a story where art wasn’t cool. If I wanted to belong, I could not dare to admit that I knew I was an artist myself. 

There was the life I wished I could have lived: one where all parts of me that felt misunderstood, invisible and different could take up space through colours, shapes and composition by pouring my heart and soul onto a canvas. Looking at a painting is so much like looking into a mirror - reflecting different parts of the self back to us. I yearned for a life in which I’d be seen, without having to explain myself with words.

Then there was the life I actually created: the life I thought I should live to be accepted, allowing my true interests, longings and desires to fall away. 

It’s not that I didn’t live a good life. I travelled to exotic places, immersed myself in different cultures, dove deeply into self development. It’s that I didn’t live the life I needed to truly thrive and flourish. 

I became a nurse, worked schedules that didn’t match my circadian rhythm, worked with patients that were too taxing on my nervous system, reported to bosses that weren’t interested in helping me meet my needs and slowly began tu burn out. I fantasised about quitting. There was always a small part of me that kept dreaming about having my own art studio. But at the time, it remained just a dream. 

I was too scared to risk leaving a decent and secure job, so I ignored all of the signs life and my body were giving me that I was walking in the wrong direction. 

In 2020, shortly before the pandemic, my life as I knew it crashed (or more accurately: I was given the wake up call I needed to begin to attune to my true needs). Symptoms of complex post traumatic stress disorder made it impossible to perform even simple life tasks and forced me to finally quit my job. Panic attacks and intrusive memories became daily occurrences. I felt hopeless for many months, wondering when or if I would ever be able to return to my normal life. I wished for a magic button that would just take me back. (I never found it) 

I didn’t know then that it would take me over 2 years to recover (and that recovery would continue to this day), nor that I would never return to the life I then called normal. 

But I also didn’t know that instead of a magic button, I would find the courage inside of me to face past traumas that were still running my life and actually resolve them. 

I didn’t know that in my recovery, I would find myself at a day clinic that happened to have a focus on art, where I would suddenly have access to an art studio space, design software and lots of time to focus on this medium of expression and that I would be surrounded by people who would support and even celebrate my artistic side. 

I didn’t know I would begin to finally start taking steps towards the life that genuinely feels like mine.

Today, I can look back at exhibitions I got to be a part of, word of mouth sales of custom made paintings, bright eyed joy in my friend’s faces when I would show them my art and finally, the birth of my business. 

I can say now that it is truly my highest joy to allow you to feel special and seen by using my heightened sensitivity that I once thought of as weakness, but is actually my strength, to capture the essence of your soul as we both perceive it in a piece of art. 

You deserve to feel special and seen and heard. You deserve see your own heart, soul, personality, values and beauty reflected back to you through a piece of art that speaks so much without needing to use words. You deserve to infuse your home or work space with you. 

And I am here to help you do just that.