About
Welcome to my world, where creative play meets profound personal discoveries and insights. I believe that art offers a way to connect deeply with ourselves and others. My creativity, or what I call my Muse, is my source of strength and the way that I find joy in life.
What she revealed to me is that you can’t separate yourself from who you are. And each new experience in life will show you a little more of who that is if you let it. I believe every situation is raw material for the work of art that is our lives, and it is our power to choose how we use that material. It’s what makes us artists.
Big Picture Creative Co. is the culmination of my passions: creating art and helping people by reflecting their reasons for existence. I impart to you some of the methods and inspirations that have worked for me. They are the frame to the Big Picture and, once established, YOUR muse can appear and fill that frame with beauty and life.
Credentials
2023 Certified Professional Coach, International Association of Professional Recovery Coaches
2022 Certification: Advanced Graphic Design
2022 Certification: Digital Marketing
2009 Bachelor of Fine Art: Painting and Drawing
2000 Associate of Applied Science: Graphic Design and Illustration
Order prints of my artwork at Fine Art America
Over the last twenty years I have been a painter, writer, graphic designer and photographer. I've learned that one of the biggest challenges to thriving as a creative person is figuring out how to organize the constant flow of ideas that my Muse wants to share with me. I imagine her as a playful being, continually tugging for my attention. But sometimes the ideas she brings can feel overwhelming if I don't have a means to act on them. They can pile up and lead to shut-down. Then my Muse, disappointed, goes into hiding.
I designed the "Big Picture" system to be a way to navigate through the many amusing ideas and my own fluctuating human energy. I wanted to keep them in balance and so I can continue moving forward.
I’ve followed my Muse through many adventures in my life, and have experienced a number of major transitions. In college, I met an exchange student from Japan who became a good friend. She shared with me the translation of my name to Kanji: “Reflecting Reasons for Existence.” What a profound gift! By revealing new meaning in my name, she also gave me a personal mission statement that has stuck with me to this day.
Throughout my professional life, I have found ways to reflect reasons for existence. I’ve held a variety of different jobs, from day jobs in coffee shops to support my arts education and painting exhibitions, to career jobs that allowed me to use graphic design as a tool to communicate someone else’s vision. With each new position, I’ve contributed a little more than expected by looking deeply at what the work means and reflecting that meaning through creative expression.
It wasn’t until I set down my brushes and decided to experience life as a “non-artist” that I realized how much I thrive on creativity. I was working for county government, the first time I’d ever had a steady paycheck with benefits, that I realized I had no direction anymore. It was terrifying. That is when my Muse first made herself known to me as a distinct entity. Her name was Sunny Lee Frost and she showed up as a character in the fiction writing I had begun to experiment with.
"...you can’t separate yourself from who you are. And each new experience in life will show you a little more of who that is if you let it."
2019, 40th birthday, celebrating my adventures
1999 with Satoko at Seattle Central College
2016, teaching the Larimer County Commissioners to make paper snowflakes
2023, with Candace Hutchison at Sanderosa Gallery, Laporte CO