While my life has taken plenty of twists and turns, I never thought I’d be a GenX late-in-life blooming artist, magnetically drawn to a personal art revolution. Whatever it was that pushed me in the middle of July 2025, it had me running for art supplies to finally answer to a burgeoning sense of “I have to do art! Now!”
I didn’t know what art I needed to do, I just knew I needed to put color on paper, on canvas. And so it was that first 8″ x 8″ acrylic in shades of dark blue to light blue, the only thing I could conceptualize at the time, that had me sitting at my kitchen counter painting. And then weeping. Literally weeping for the flow of energy and emotion that moved through me in waves as I painted those blues to canvas. When I completed what was a very short painting, I sat there through the tears and I began to realize all that I’d held inside me for decades.
Think about all that color. All that art. All those shapes and lines and forms that had been stuck inside of me, wanting to get out for so long.
You see, I’ve always had artistic tendencies. I’ve leaned towards wearable arts, done cross stitch, beadwork and jewelry, photography, tried sketching here and there, designed all my business marketing and website materials. And I’ve always played with color in whatever I was doing. When I finally began to purchase art supplies for my revolutionary art wave, I was shocked how many art-type supplies I’d collected over the years that were already in my home!
This had been sneaking up on me for a long while. It was like some part of me already knew. The only thing that was missing was my own conscious belief that I was, I am, an artist and that I can do art. The cultural and family wall I had to emerge through was monumental. I remember choking through the first few times I said out loud that I’m doing art and that I’m creating an art studio. Really? It felt so outlandish, yet so right.
After that initial painting, I settled into a daily committed practice (I mean, I spent all that money on art supplies I better gosh darn use them!) I woke every single morning — still do — and pad from my bedroom, to get my cup of tea and then right back into my burgeoning art studio.
And I made one agreement with myself in the beginning that I believe is what carries me every single day with my art. My self agreement is: I make sure that whatever art I’m creating, I want to do that art. I regularly make sure I feel some kind of oomph of desire in my core that I want to try. Why? Because I’ve lived through a lot of bull-pa-tooski in my life. I’ve done a lot of things I thought I had to make myself do. And I thought, if I’m going to do this art thing, I want to make sure my heart and soul is totally into whatever it is that I’m artistically creating.
That’s what guides me every single day with my art. Now, do I have down days and I have to walk away? Yep. Do I have bumps? Hell, yeah. Are there things I don’t know artistically that I take time to learn and make ugly mistakes and laugh and giggle with myself for the insanity of trying? Absolutely. I’m teaching myself along the way.
But at the end of the day, I know that most every piece of art I create — the good, the bad, the ugly, the wonderful — I did it because I wanted to. I did it because I felt some part of myself, some part of my soul in the middle of my art that I want to meet and experience.
I want to make it worth it, that for all the years art has been hidden from me — all those years leading up to a simple blue painting that I cried over with such overwhelm of loss and recovery — that I’m here now, drawing and painting and coloring and experimenting at the center of my heart and soul’s desire.
So whatever you find in the middle of my art, I hope you find a sense of deep answering to the balance and nature of rich color and flow where I’ve sent my soul to answer to the great richness of the Cosmos. I hope it inspires you in some kind of way.
And P.S. Thank God for the color blue and a paintbrush that saved me on a hot July day.
Dana Stovern
Off-The-Wall Art Gallery
July 17, 2026