My Story
I was born & raised in Green Bay, Wisconsin. I loved art for as long as I can remember. In 2nd grade I drew a character from a popular fast food restaurant commercial. My teacher recognized who I drew and showed the whole class, and even acted it out with the slogan.
Growing up, my grandparents had an endless supply of paper that I found myself using quite a lot of it to practice drawing. My first official art class was an oil painting class in middle school. This really opened the doors to the painting world for me. I have tried all different mediums and I found that watercolors & acrylics are the 2 that I enjoy the most.
Over the years, I have done many drawings and painting for people based on their photos. There is just something about a realistic painting that can be better than a photograph. From afar the painting can look so real and when you move closer, the viewer sees unexpected mix of colors and the various brushstrokes all combined to make that picture. There is just so much blood, sweat & tears behind every painting and the results are always so rewarding.
This is Indy. He was my inspiration to help others heal when their pet crosses the rainbow bridge.
Fast forward the last few years. I started an Etsy shop, selling portraits, ornaments and my original artwork. I had a lot of learning the ropes in order for my shop to take off. It wasn’t until I had to put my dog down that it did just that. I was overcome with sadness and to help me heal, I painted the picture that has since became a part of my branding. From there on, it became my passion to ramp up my pet portraits and help my customers with their own pet’s portraits.
Then the pandemic happened which changed a lot of things for me personally. I made the hard decision to put my shop on hold. I needed that time to regroup and forge a new way for me to make my painting work with my new ‘normal’.
In this process, I decided that I needed to break away from Etsy, moving my shop to my own platform. The fees through Etsy just didn’t make sense to me after having to increase prices due to the rising cost of supplies. By selling on my own platform, I can keep that extra cost from passing on to my customers.