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Words To Live By
As the dust settled on my gallery show in October last year, my daughter-in-law asked if I would make a painting for her classroom. She recently graduated with her master’s degree in early childhood education and had just begun her first full time teaching position. She was hoping I could create a visual representation of…
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Find My Friends
Find My Friends is an App I encouraged everyone in my family to download onto our iPhones years ago. My children were gradually scattering first across the state, then the country and then, on occasion, the globe, and I found comfort in the idea that we could always find each other (at least each other’s…
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Blue Skying!
I admit, it’s an unusual title for a blog post written in February in Pennsylvania where most days the landscape and, occasionally, my outlook resemble 50 shades of gray. My college roommate’s father, Mr. Murphy, dubbed this time of year “the Febs,” a perfect description for the daylight-deprived doldrums of a Northeast bleak mid-winter. Perhaps…
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Around The Bend
This past August, I visited the Anne of Green Gables Heritage Site on Prince Edward Island with my sister, Kathy, my niece, Abbie, and my great-niece, Logan (photos below). Cavendish, PEI, is the home of the book’s author, Lucy Maud Montgomery. We wandered red sand beaches, gazed at picturesque lighthouses, and ate amazing lobster rolls!…
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Intention and One Little Word
Intention is a powerful tool to focus one’s attention. I use intentions to clarify what’s important for me to hold onto and reach toward and, conversely, what’s important for me to let go of. I don’t make resolutions for the New Year. Unlike intentions, resolutions feel like rules: harsh, inflexible, and unsustainable. I’m also, at…
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See ….. there really is no Someday
As I’ve written in a previous post, I am a storyteller. Unfortunately, sometimes the stories I tell myself like, “you’re not really an artist” and “you’re not very good” and “no one is going to like that,” are not very kind. The chorus of voices in my head can be downright nasty, repeatedly chiding me,…
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Thank You!
A big-hearted THANK YOU to all who came to my very first gallery show at The University Wine Company https://www.universitywineco.com/ in State College on Saturday, 10/7/23. When I started my painting journey in early 2021, I never would have dreamed that I would be hosting a solo show of my work 2 ½ years later.…
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Storytelling Through Art
If there’s one thing I’ve learned about myself, it’s that I love to tell stories, my stories. I use writing as a vehicle to understand and appreciate my life. I’ve been a journaler for as long as I can remember and, in the last 20 or so years, I’ve relied on a daily gratitude journal…
Melissa Stephens Art 