My little world

Earth and Universe by KJ Gatten
“Earth and Universe” | watercolor | ink

It seemed like a good idea at the time. I was headed to visit my neighborhood friend but needed to climb the concrete steps to her front door. Why walk up those stairs when you could hop? On one foot.

I was nine years old and full of energy. Never mind that I had terrible balance; I could fall over just standing in one place on two feet. My mom had even enrolled me in ballet lessons so I could learn to float like a butterfly, or at least learn to stay upright. But none of that was in my head when I started bouncing up those stairs.

Of course I fell. I really didn’t have much of a chance.

When teeth meet concrete, they break. My two front teeth were badly chipped but at first I wasn’t really all that upset. I figured some new teeth would grow in their place. I mean, that had already happened once. But then I learned they were my permanent teeth and this would require a trip to the dentist.

I don’t have much memory of dentist visits before this event. I’m sure they were part of my life but they were unmemorable – just one of those things your parents make you do and you don’t get to vote.

This trip, though, was unforgettable.

It went on forever. Hours? Days? I sat in that chair while the dentist drilled the nerves out of both of those teeth. It was terrifying. It was painful. All I wanted was to escape and go home.

I’ll never forget this visit for another reason, though. When the torture was finally over the dentist gave me a reward for being so courageous. He handed me the most perfect little world globe. It was tiny, fit in the palm of my nine-year old hand, and I loved it at first sight. Crafted of metal and painted in great detail, this miniature world even spun on its own little wire stand. That gift taught me a few things:

  • 1) even a dentist named Skinner could have a kind heart;
  • 2) good things can come out of bad experiences; and
  • 3) I was brave.

Thirty years later, I was living on my own and happily working at a university – until all of a sudden I wasn’t so happy. It started with subtle things, things that made me think surely I had imagined them. But no – the touches, the inuendos, the assertion of power were all very real and very inappropriate. I kept a journal of everything that happened and how I felt about it, asked my boss to shield me from this man who had power over both of us, and then one day it all stopped. I was relieved but also had an awful feeling that maybe his attentions had turned to someone else.

I was right.

A year later a colleague approached me and asked about my experiences with this man. She had been the new victim. We gathered our collective courage and together filed a complaint. That complaint led to an investigation which led to testimony in front of a committee.

It went on forever. Hours? Days? It was terrifying. It was painful. All I wanted was to escape and go home. But I faced that committee, told my story, and shared my journal.

Shortly afterward a small box arrived in the mail. It contained that little metal globe and a note from my mom reminding me how brave I was as a little girl and saying how proud she was of the brave woman I had become.

And my little world kept spinning.

Note to self: You are brave enough to face whatever your world asks of you.

Seasons and transformations

Butterfly Tree
“Butterfly Tree” | gouache | ink | watercolor

Hopefully, we all go through transformations, right? Because otherwise we’d be stuck as our infant selves. Yeah, okay – I’ve known a few of those, too, but most of us change and grow as the years pass.

One of my transformations was marked by the dubious honor of a “Most Improved” award. I mean, to get that award you have to be in a pretty sorry state to begin with, don’t you think?

Such was the case with my junior-high-school-self, I guess. Instead of having me hang around the house all summer, my mom enrolled me in Sears Charm School. Yep, Sears the department store. What? You don’t think of Sears as leaders in the charm department? Me, neither, but off I went. The good news was that one of my best friends, Linda, was signed up, too.

Linda had it all. She was beautiful, smart, funny, and confident. She should have gotten the “Least Improved” award because she had the least to learn at charm school. But there we were, learning how to walk, how to talk, what to wear and how to wear it.

The crescendo moment was a fashion show. That was kind of fun. We got to roam through the girls’ department and pick out our outfits, applying what we’d learned, of course. At the end of the school I was dubbed “Most Improved.” Linda went on to model for Sears at more fashion shows and in high school she was crowned homecoming queen. You might think she was the kind of person you would love to hate but you would be wrong about that. Sometimes good things happen to good people and Linda was – and is – good people.

Out there in the natural world lots of things go through transformations. Butterflies are the transformation experts, and I love them, but I also love trees. Just think about all the changes our trees go through season after season. I thought about that, and then this image popped into my head.

My title for this painting is “Butterfly Tree” but my husband said it should be called, “Float Like a Butterfly, Sing Like a Tree.” And that’s why we call him The Wordsmith.


Note to self: embrace the changing seasons and let them transform you.

The mother of all inspiration

“Lena” | gouache | ink | watercolor

On this blog I write about what inspires me – the stories behind the images that I paint. That inspiration comes from all kinds of sources but at the heart of it all, it comes from my mom. She was the one who inspired me to think creatively in the first place.

Lena grew up on a farm in Southeastern Ohio.

I wrote an essay about her once for a college English class. All I can remember of it now is the first line: “With the determination of Scarlett O’Hara making a dress out of the living room drapes, my mother accomplished everything she set out to do and inspired me to do the same.” That pretty much sums up her approach to life and her approach to parenting.

Lena on the way to the hospital on the day I was born.

Lena was a force, but in a gentle way, if that makes sense. I used to call her the quiet steamroller because she had a way of getting things done when it wasn’t something she could do herself. In her soft voice she would cast a spell on you until the thing you most wanted to do in the world turned out to be exactly what she wanted. But so you don’t get the wrong picture in your head, let me just say that her soft voice and determination were tools used for good, and usually for the good of the people she loved rather than for herself.

Lena with my brother, Tony, and me.

The other thing we called her was the Energizer Bunny. She was never rushed or in a hurry but she accomplished more in a week than most people do in a year. She developed a strategy of what I call whittling: dividing projects up into little bits just big enough for the amount of time and/or energy she had available. I find myself using that trick a lot these days.

Walk O’ Wonders in Great Western Shopping Center was one of our favorite places.

She was one of the most creative people I have ever known. She didn’t paint (except for the reflective polka dots she painted on the bumpers in her carport) or write (except for the many family histories she researched and developed into books) or create collages (except for the button collections she turned into an art form). But her mind was always looking at things in a different way, reimagining all the potential possibilities, and she trained me to do the same.

Lena in her sewing room

And boy, could she sew. Her sewing machine was always ready for action. When I was a little girl I stood by her side while she sewed dresses for me. When I got old enough, I got my own machine set up next to hers in the basement and we would spend hours there, sewing together. She would even tear out my stitches when I made a mistake. Now that’s love.

Lena wasn’t above acting goofy to make people smile.

Her greatest gift was making the people in her life feel her love. I always felt like I was at the top of her list but the thing is, she made everyone feel like that. In the days before social media, she kept in touch with just about everyone she ever met. Countless birthday and anniversary cards and hand-written notes. Oh, how she would have loved Facebook!

She was my maid of honor when I got married in 2003.

The one thing she couldn’t steamroll over was cancer. Don’t get me wrong – she tried. She did everything in her power to beat it because, as she said, “I haven’t done everything I wanted to do.” At the very end, when she had lost the energy to speak or even keep her eyes open, that Energizer Bunny gathered enough strength to tell me she loved me. Talk about inspiration. If I could muster up half the grace and courage she showed during that time I would be very proud of myself. She lost the fight 14 years ago today.

Giggling like little girls, we sprayed each other’s hair with glitter for the wedding.

This painting “Lena” is from my mom’s high school graduation picture. It doesn’t look exactly like her because I’m hopeless at painting portraits but it captures something of her. When I look at it I get the warm feeling that thinking of her always brings and that’s good enough for me.


Note to self: never forget the source of your inspiration or the lessons that love taught you.

The Outlaw

The Outlaw by KJ Gatten
“The Outlaw” | gouache | watercolor | ink

When I came up with the title for this painting, I immediately thought of my dad. Most of the time he wasn’t a REAL outlaw but when we gathered at my mom’s parents’ house and they started taking family photos he quickly became one.

The Outlaws

I guess I’d better explain before you get the wrong idea. As our family grew we wouldn’t all fit in one photo so my grandma divided the adults into two groups: her children and the in-laws. My jokester dad (think Don Knotts and you’ll have him pegged) quickly changed the name of his group to “The Outlaws.” That’s him, second from the left.

Admit it – you’ve felt like an outlaw when hanging out with your in-laws more than once, right? It’s okay, I won’t tell anyone.

But that’s not why I painted this piece. I actually painted it because of Laura, a friend of mine. Laura loves sheep. I don’t think she’s ever actually owned a sheep – maybe she’s never even met one in person – but sheep speak to her and they must say something funny because they always make her smile. So when my husband and I were wandering around Blue Ridge, a little north Georgia mountain town, and I saw a small herd of metal sheep outside a shop, I immediately snapped a photo and sent it to her. I was pretty sure she needed me to bring one of those sheep home to her and I was right.

Purl with her pearls
Purl with her pearls

On the drive back with the metal sheep in the back seat and Laura on the phone, we decided the sheep needed a name. Of course, the job fell to my husband, the wordsmith, and he dubbed her “Purl.” See, sheep make wool and wool is used for knitting and purl is something you do when you knit. Get it? Perfect.

Laura gave Purl a place of honor in the front yard and promptly bought her a necklace. Pearls, of course.


Note to self: Don’t always follow the herd. Channel your inner outlaw to see things from a different perspective.

For the love of trees

Heartwood | watercolor | ink
“Heartwood” | watercolor | ink

I grew up kind of out in the country, on four acres of land. The first two acres had the house, yard, and a very large vegetable garden with some apple trees. We grew plenty of vegetables and fruit to feed our family of four and sold the extras at a roadside vegetable stand.

Shucking corn and shelling peas filled my summer days and made me hate vegetables for a very long time, until I had to become a vegetarian because of some health issues. Life likes to laugh at you like that, doesn’t it?

But that’s another story. Like how my aunt helped out at the roadside stand when she visited by dangling her long legs at the passersby like a Rockette. (I’m not naming any names but you know who you are.)

Like I said, another story.

Anyway, I always envied my friends who lived in town. They were so close together, they could hang out and shop and walk very very slowly past the cute boy’s house hoping for a glimpse or maybe even a casual conversation on a lazy summer day because if you’re crushing on a guy how can you be expected to wait clear until school starts to see him again?

Me? I got to shuck corn and shell peas.

I can tell that you’re starting to feel sorry for me, but wait. On those back two acres were thick woods. When not shucking, shelling, or minding the vegetable stand, I roamed through those woods, cleared paths and made hidey holes. I was forest bathing before forest bathing was cool and those woods were my summer retreat.

Up closer to the house, there was a giant tree with giant limbs. I shimmied up the trunk and sat on those thick branches for hours at time, reimagining the tree as my very own apartment. I stuck masking tape “buttons” on the branches and at a mere touch I had dinner prepared, the TV tuned to my favorite show, and all the laundry washed, dried and folded in a snap.

Jane Jetson had nothing on me.

Living out there in the country, I learned to love trees and that’s what I was thinking about when I painted this Heartwood image; just giving back some of the love trees have given me. Maybe I didn’t miss so much by not living in town after all.


Note to self: Make some time to spend some time with trees.