Returning to the Things That Make Us Feel Alive

For the past month and half, I’ve been deep in the world of mermaids—painting flowing hair, shimmering tails, dancing light beneath the water’s surface, and all the little details that make my inner child absolutely lose her sh*t with joy.

And it all started as a small idea. A tiny creative tug that nagged at me for years before I finally gave into it. 

So I said yes to my inner child and started painting these mermaids. But the more I leaned into it, the more I realized these paintings weren’t really about mermaids at all.

They’re about freedom.

About returning to the things that once made us feel most alive before adulthood taught us to overthink everything.

As a kid, I was completely obsessed with The Little Mermaid. I loved the quiet stillness of being underwater—the feeling that the world softened for a moment, the loud world shushed, and all the weight of expectation was immediately lifted from my little shoulders. Looking back now, I think that feeling stayed with me all these years.

And somewhere between motherhood and daily responsibilities, and just trying to be a functioning adult human, I forgot how important it is to follow the things that naturally light us up.

Not because they’re productive” or “make sense.”

But because they make us feel more like ourselves.

So this collection became my way of saying yes to that feeling again.

Yes to wonder.
Yes to beauty.
Yes to obsession.
Yes to creating something simply because it makes my soul happy.

And maybe that’s your reminder too.

To revisit the thing you loved before the world told you to be practical.
To make room for delight again.
To stop abandoning the parts of yourself that were never meant to be left behind.

I explore this in my studio vlog – where I take you along in my studio creating my mermaids and infected my entire house with gold leaf flakes. 

I’m currently finishing the final paintings in this mermaid series. These pieces feel especially personal to me, and as always, you’ll be the very first to see them before the collection is released publicly. And yes, I will also be releasing prints of these as well 🙂

Until then, I’ll be in the studio painting colorful scales, sunlight ripples, and STILL finding gold leaf flakes in my sock drawer for the next six months.