About - Nook & Helm

about the artist

Detour into deep water…

Christmas in 2022, we purchased an oil painting set for our daughter, Ella. I thought it would be just like those Bob Ross episodes—”a happy little tree lives here…” But it wasn’t long before we realized that “happy little accidents” were decorating the downstairs floor and furniture.

So, we compromised, and bought a watercolor tutorial to do together…

and I fell in love with the brush and the water.

A few years later I moved my art practice out of the formal living room where it had expanded to and into a studio space near Hillyard. Today, I’m grateful to have a “Nook and Helm” to create and get messy in. But in those first few years, it was just Ella and I, growing and learning together.

Married for over thirty years and a mother of eight, I came to watercolor later in life—slowly, in the small spaces between homeschooling and raising a family. My work grows from the inspiration around me: the beauty in faces, places, and creatures that stay with me. I now balance studio time with homeschooling my youngest three, supported by a family who has encouraged every step of this late but deeply fulfilling path.

The materials I use

I work with artist‑grade materials chosen for their performance and longevity: Daniel Smith watercolors, hand‑painted collage elements adhered with Books by Hand PVA, and 100% cotton papers like Arches, Saunders Waterford, and Hahnemühle. These materials let the pigments, textures, and quiet details in my work speak for themselves.

The past that informs my art

I didn’t realize when I started this journey that the past was speaking to me. A long-time love of Norman Rockwell’s work shaped my attention to detail, while a lesser-known Rockwell captured my heart more than twenty years ago. My first “original” piece still hangs in my dining room, and its depth and texture ingnited my desire to layer my work on paper. That both artists were watercolorists brings a quiet full-circle moment to this unexpected path.

The past that inspires my art

No one inspires my artistic journey more than my mother. Her infectious love for people, the ocean, and living things echoes in me, repeating like the waves on a shore. She wasn’t able to pursue her love of painting beyond a few brave classes at the college in her sixties. But she inspires me now, as I embark on the same late journey.