It all started with a smashed rock on the driveway.

This time last year I was in Doha, Qatar hiding out from the heat and learning to paint with my brand-new obsession: handmade watercolor paints made from hand-foraged pigments. I had made the first set of paints at the end of June, but was just getting ready to try them out after packing them up and hauling them with me on a trip halfway around the world.

The potential of a smashed rock

My first painting wasn’t spectacular, and I knew it I had some work to do to get better at it. The paints weren’t terribly good either, but I definitely could see the potential in them. I knew, deep within my bones, that this was the start of something that would keep me occupied for the rest of my life.

Happy 1st Birthday to Wild Ozark Paleo Paints!

And a year later, it still feels that way. I wish I would have thought ahead to have created a commemorative set of paints or a painting. But I didn’t. Thank you for following along and making this journey with me. Your feedback here, at Instagram, or on FB or in real life has been and always will be important to me.

Current Projects

I’m working on my Birds of Prey project, one bird at a time. Right now a red-tailed hawk is on my easel. There are rocks all over the kitchen counter today, waiting to be sorted and processed into paints. I can’t do them all today, but I can sort them by shades of color they’ll produce so when I am ready to start crushing them, I’ll have a jump on that part.

Life is good.