I do not always know what I am going to make when I sit down to create. Sometimes I have a clear idea. A verse, a shape, a color that has been sitting in the back of my mind for days. But more often I sit down with something quieter than an idea. More like a feeling. A prompting. A sense that something wants to be made and I am just the one being asked to make it.

That is when I know I am in the right place.

My studio is small. The light comes in from one window and in the mornings it falls across my desk in a way that I have come to think of as a kind of grace. I pray before I open my sketchbook. Not a long prayer. Not a formal one. Just a few words that amount to the same thing every time: not my hands, but yours. Not my vision, but yours.

I started doing this years ago and I have never stopped because what comes out when I pray first is always different from what comes out when I do not. Softer. More true. Less about what I think looks beautiful and more about what actually carries something.

I believe that beauty is a form of worship. That when a woman hangs a piece of art on her wall that reminds her she is loved and chosen and held, something sacred happens in that ordinary room. The art becomes an altar of sorts. A daily reminder. A small, quiet, faithful thing.

That is what I am trying to make every time I sit down to create. Not a product. A prayer with a frame around it.

From the mountain, with love,