My Truth in Roses: Painting Through Endings, Healing, and Becoming

Roses have followed humanity across centuries—symbols of devotion, mystery, protection, and divine unfolding. Their presence in myth, poetry, and prayer is ancient, yet each time I paint a rose, something inside me opens as if for the first time. In a year marked by poignant endings, unexpected pivots, and even a broken dominant wrist, I found myself returning to roses as if they were a lifeline back to my own center.

Rumi wrote, “The rose’s rarest essence lives in the thorns.”

This year, I learned exactly what that means.

Pain softened me.

Change reshaped me.

And somewhere inside the fracture—literal and metaphorical—something  more authentically creative and essential was distilled. 

When my wrist broke, I couldn’t paint with my right hand. Or do much for that matter. Instead, I was forced to slow down, to soften my grip, to find a new way of moving color across the canvas or paper.

 Roses met me there. They became both medicine and mentor, teaching me presence when everything felt uncertain, teaching me tenderness when my body and spirit - and bruised ego felt raw and uncertain. 

I paint with watercolors made from real gemstones and crystals— everyone hand made using traditional slab and muller techniques.  Here, I infused many to amplify the work with gold, silver, or copper and this time I also turned to mother of pearl and abalone shell.  These elements carry vibration, memory, and a quiet intelligence of their own. 

When rose energy meets gemstone energy, something alchemical awakens. The pigments shimmer with a softness that feels like balm. The act becomes a ritual, a way of listening to myself again. Finding trust in myself and voice. 

In the center of every rose—its spiral heart—there is a stillness that invites us inward.

It became my compass.

Some of the biggest, freest, and boldest statements of my artistic life have emerged in  this time—large-format watercolor rose canvases painted with my whole body, painted from instinct rather than precision, painted from the kind of truth you can only touch when everything else has fallen away.

These works are not just images of roses; they are records of becoming.They are evidence of the climb out of loss, the reclaimed breath after pain, the courage to bloom in a new direction.

Roses showed me who I am as an artist—and who I am still becoming.

The Stone Roses Series

I return to them as an ongoing series because they remind me that beauty is not a luxury. It is a form of resilience.

A form of knowing. A form of healing.

In a world that moves fast, the rose invites us to slow down, breathe, and listen.

 Our art invites us to begin again—bravely, boldly, and with an open heart.

This is my truth in roses.

And it continues to unfold, wild carefree brush stroke and petal at at time.