Before Her Art - The Backstory

8 year old Heather had it all figured out…

If you had asked me as a child what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would have answered with absolute confidence: a surgeon. Preferably one traveling to India for medical missions while also somehow adopting a large number of children and remaining fiercely independent forever. In my eight-year-old mind, this plan was airtight. Marriage was not really a part of the vision. Art definitely wasn’t part of the vision. Honestly, I don’t think I even considered that it was a real career option for adults. Art was just the thing I loved doing to pass unreasonable amounts of time.

And I do mean unreasonable.

I was the kind of child who would disappear for hours to draw. At one point I was actually grounded from art. Other thirteen year olds were getting their electronics taken away while my mom had to tell me I wasn’t allowed to draw anymore because apparently that was the only way to get my attention. Looking back, that probably should have been a sign.

I was raised by a single mom, which shaped so much of who I became. She taught me resilience, hard work, independence, and how to keep moving forward even when life feels impossibly heavy. Watching her manage everything alone made me determined to build a meaningful life and work hard for it.

But immediately after middle school, I walked away from art completely.

^The last drawing … it was the summer after 8th grade.

Life became about responsibility, work, and school. I focused intensely on pursuing medicine and eventually began working in a hospital. Around that same time, God introduced one major complication to my very independent life plan: my husband. (Who is amazing by the way.)

We met in high school, continued dating, and were married when I was 18… which is a shocking contrast from the plan childhood me was so confident in. God had better plans, I know that now.

^Those kids had no idea where life was about to take them.

I still tried to pursue medicine for a few years, but eventually burnout hit hard. Hospital work, schooling, exhaustion, motherhood, and trying to keep up with everything slowly drained me. After having children, I stepped away from medicine entirely.

At that point, creativity started creeping its way back into my life.

I began making things on the side mostly to preserve my sanity as a young mom. Nothing glamorous, just little creative projects that reminded me I was still a person outside of folding laundry and snack distribution management.

Then during Covid, our family opened our home to foster care, and later we adopted two of our children. Life became exhausting, chaotic, meaningful, loud, and very, very full.

“I wish there was a way to know you’re in the good ol’ days before you’ve actually left them.” -Andy Bernard

Somewhere in the middle of all that, I started itching to build something outside the home again. So I opened an art studio for kindergarten through 12th grade students. Somehow, despite having abandoned art years earlier, it became an almost immediate success.

Then the students started asking if I could teach painting.

Tiny problem: I was not a painter.

At all.

But for their sake, I decided to give it a try anyway. And to my complete surprise, it came very naturally. What started as “I should probably stay one lesson ahead of these children” quickly turned into a real career opportunity.

Soon I began live event painting as another source of work, which unexpectedly opened doors I never could have imagined. I traveled all over the United States and to Europe working as a live artist. The little girl once grounded from art was somehow building an entire life around it.

Then in 2023, during one of the most difficult seasons our family had ever faced, the concept for Elegy of the Everyday was born.

It came from this growing realization that the ordinary frustrations of life (the messes, interruptions, clutter, noise, responsibilities, and imperfections) are often deeply connected to the people we love most. The very things that exhaust us can also become evidence of a full and meaningful life.

I began with a piece called Precious Grit, inspired by the hatred of messy floors beneath my feet. Since then, I’ve continued creating as an intentional practice for myself along with the hope of inspiring others to find beauty, and thankfulness even in the darker, harder moments of life- because we are made for joy.