For ten years I worked at Starbucks, where I worked my way up to manager and then stepped back down to protect my own well-being. I stayed because I loved the place and the people who came through it. It was somewhere I truly thrived and served with joy. Then things changed, and a store I’d once been proud of became somewhere I dreaded walking into. Eventually I’d had enough, and I left.

Painting has been with me since I was small. I learned most of it at home, painting alongside Bob Ross, exactly the way he hoped people would. For years my friends and family told me I was good enough to do this for a living, and for years I smiled and said no, because turning the thing I loved most into a job felt like it might spoil it. Then my income was gone, and “someday” became now. This page is my first real attempt at being a full-time artist. 

We’re not there yet, but I’d love to have you along while I figure it out. <3

People come to Lavender Town every day for one reason: to say goodbye to the Pokémon they’ve lost. The tower is full of ghosts you can’t see without a Silph Scope, and the one that blocks your way, “Be gone... Intruders...”, is a mother who died protecting her Cubone from Team Rocket. Her warning was never a threat. Maybe everything in Lavender Town sounds scarier than it means.

The games never show you what’s past the town, so we painted it. Eight paintings, one night, dusk to dawn, a place where the lonely ones gather because they’re honored there. Maybe they’re ghosts, maybe they’re memories, and maybe all they ever wanted was each other. Every painting is looking for a wall of its own. Maybe one of them is looking for yours.