Melissa Stephens Art

Stamp collectors from around the world travel to the American Philatelic Society in the small town of Bellefonte, PA, just east of my home in State College. One day, while browsing the society’s exhibits and small shop, I found a commemorative stamp set honoring the life and writing of Robert Frost. I’ve reflected on his famous poem, “The Road Not Taken,” in a previous post, “Around the Bend.” I’d chosen his poem for my High School graduation speech, and, at that time, I envisioned Frost’s two roads as paths into the future of my own and my classmates’ adult lives. Some 44 years later, I was delighted to discover, while gluing pieces of the stamp set onto a canvas as the base layer of collage in a floral painting (above and detail images below), Frost has a new lesson to teach me.  

I’m transitioning away from floral paintings, which is uncomfortable. They’ve been my “go to” for over 5 years. From my first DREADFUL attempt at painting the riot of white Shasta daisies blooming outside the kitchen door of our old stone farmhouse in Lancaster County, I’ve come, I believe, a long way! I’ve learned everything I know about painting by painting, flower after flower, by not giving up. Hundreds of blooms later, I’ve developed a process for making abstract florals that brings me great joy. Why stop? 

Because I’ve been dancing around (aka avoiding!) a BIG idea lurking in the peripheral shadows of my creativity for 2 years now, my dream of writing and illustrating a children’s book. Our first grandchild is due at the end of April and, if I hope to sit with him on my lap, reading that story together, I need to get making! But I don’t know how and, if I’m being honest, I’m afraid I don’t have the artistic ability to turn my grand visions into written words and whimsical paintings worthy of binding in book form. I may have painted those awful Shasta daisies over 5 years ago, but that disappointing feeling of failure remains palpable to this day. 

I’ve been working through the book Creating the Impossible by Michael Neill in conjunction with taking an online creativity course, “Momentum,” with British artist, Louise Fletcher. Both are mindset programs, forcing me to confront the pithy excuses and pathetic “I don’t know how’s” that have been racing round the oval of my mind like short track speedskaters in the Olympics. My limiting beliefs have been winning gold medals while the rest of me has been sitting, frozen on the ice, whining, “I can’t skate!” (Fact Check: Though I may not have a triple salchow in my repertoire, I can indeed ice skate!)

Which brings me back to the message Robert Frost’s poem has for me today. No longer a mirror, reflecting decisions I made in the past, his words now are a beam of light, illuminating a choice I must make in this moment: give up or try? I can choose to stay in my comfy, warm greenhouse painting flowers OR I can venture out onto the cold, slippery surface of my doubts and insecurities and try to paint birds and the carefree joy of childhood and all the other ideas my mind can see but my hands cannot make. Yet. 

I’ve chosen the hard path before. “Two Roads,” with its grounded, central vase holding 2 budding branches which gracefully stretch diagonally across a canvas of possibility, is encouraging me to choose that hard path again: to try, to play with my ideas, to not give up, to trust that, in time, I will find my way. If I begin, the art will show me the way. Frost’s poem assures me, if I take that road less travelled again, it will “make all the difference.” Why not give it a try?

PS: This painting, along with 8 of my other floral paintings, will be on display in a show titled, “The Flower Shop,” at the Bellefonte Art Museum during March 2026 (see show description under the exhibits tab on their website). The museum is open Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays from 12-4:30. While in Bellefonte, you can also visit the American Philatelic Society (open Monday through Friday, 8:30AM – 5PM). Both are free!