BETWEEN HERE AND HEAVEN

Some paintings begin with a clear idea.

Others begin with a feeling.

Between Here and Heaven began with both, but neither of them belonged entirely to me.

This piece started when a client reached out after falling in love with one of my original paintings, Amongst the Willows. She connected deeply with the feeling of that piece and wanted something inspired by it for her own home.

That’s always a delicate place for me as an artist.

When someone falls in love with an existing painting and asks for something similar, I want to honor what they saw in the original without trying to recreate the same painting twice. My work has always been intuitive. I rarely know exactly where a painting is going when I begin, and some of the pieces I love most are the ones where I have to surrender control and let the painting become what it needs to become.

So we started with the elements that meant the most to her and then she gave me the meaning behind them.

She saw the water as an aisle, almost like the path a bride would walk toward her groom. The flowers became part of that pathway, guiding you forward. The water represented the Holy Spirit, and the glow in the distance felt almost like another realm waiting just beyond what we can see.

She described it as feeling like Jesus was just behind the veil, represented by light. Isn't that so beautiful?

That completely shifted the way I saw the painting.

Suddenly, this wasn't simply a landscape.

It was about movement.

About walking forward.

About being guided somewhere you can't completely see yet.

About the space between where we are and where we're going.

As I worked, I found myself adding more water, allowing the florals to create a natural pathway toward the center. I wanted the composition to feel almost like you could step into it and keep walking.

And then there was the light.

That subtle glow over the water became one of the most important parts of the piece for me. It felt like something waiting just beyond the horizon. Not loud or obvious, but present enough to make you wonder what might be on the other side.

The further I got into the painting, the more everything began to point toward the same place.

Forward.

Toward the light.

Toward something beyond what we can see. Towards our loving Father.

One of my favorite parts of creating commissions is that the painting becomes a conversation between the artist and the collector. They bring their memories, their meaning, their faith and the things they see within the work. I bring my intuition, my process and whatever the painting asks of me along the way. Oh, and whole lot of prayer.

This began with Amongst the Willows, but it was never meant to become Amongst the Willows again.

It became its own story.

Between Here and Heaven.

A painting about the space between where we stand and where we're going.

About trusting the path even when we can't see the whole thing.

About the water, the flowers and the light.

And ultimately, about faith.

About walking forward with your eyes fixed on Jesus, surrounded by the beauty of the Holy Spirit, and moving toward the One who has been waiting for you all along.

Like a bride walking down the aisle toward her groom, there is something so beautiful about knowing where you're going, even when you can't see everything beyond it.

The flowers become the pathway. The water becomes the aisle. The light becomes the promise beyond the veil.

And somewhere between here and heaven, we keep walking toward Him.