Recently I found a muse in stories shared about orchids. It all started with my own orchid story.
My friend Stephanie was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. This news broke my heart. I needed to do more than pray and send my love. I wanted to give some hope. As I pondered over what else I could do, orchids came to mind.
I went to a friend’s orchid farm and found a very delicate, small orchid that had multiple spikes of buds patiently waiting to bloom. I wanted this orchid to be there for Stephanie as she went through the rounds of chemo, blooming slowly over a long period of time to give hope with each new bloom.
Going to the orchid farm and giving the orchid to Stephanie inspired me to paint. My goal was to capture the hope and joy that had come from the gift of the orchid. The idea came to paint orchid portraits. I photographed 45 individual orchid plants, documenting the name, bloom size, height, and width. Then I started to paint with Stephanie in my heart.
As I thought about my own experience, I wondered if there were more orchid stories out there. I reached out to my family and friends and asked if they had any orchid stories to share. Beautiful stories came rolling in and filled me as I went to the studio.
I was not just painting orchids. I was painting love. The love keeps growing as more stories started pouring in.
