Hey everyone!
Sometimes, you get real busy and caught up in the freelance-hustlin', small-business-growin', money-makin', life, and you just have to stop and throw your parents a frickin' bone.
My parents have my very first mural I ever EVER painted EVER on the wall of their kitchen. I painted this when I was in high school:
I'm embarrassed to show you that, but for the sake of a good blog post, there you have it. Back in the day, my mom had just finished tearing off all our old ugly wallpaper in our kitchen, and she was going to paint it. I remember wanting to try painting a mural SO bad - I was obsessed. My supportive and brave parents let me paint that mural instead of making the kitchen wall a nice, solid color. I also was able to pass it off as a mother's day present, so that was definitely another win for me.
That mural sparked everything for me. I am living my dream of being a muralist now, and I owe everything to that mother's day present, and the parents who let me paint it. My parents would have gatherings and their friends would see the mural in the kitchen, and hire me to paint walls in their houses for $10 an hour. Pretty sweet gig as a high schooler actually (my prices have raised a bit since then). I kept getting jobs sporadically throughout college and afterwards, and slowly built my business, baby step by baby step. #soflippingrateful
Anyway, I've had to look at that mural a LOT over the years. Eventually, after 4 years of gaining skills in art school, I could not ethically let my parents keep it looking like that. I re-painted it to look like this a few years ago:
About a month ago, my parents re-did their countertops, and the countertop people had to plaster over almost all of the orchids on the right. Last weekend, I went to fix the spot, and found a whole lot of other spots I wanted to fix. "Perfectionist" is definitely not a word I would use to describe myself in regular life, or in the way I create art. But this wall is different and special - It's my first. And it's my parent's. They should have something I feel proud of. Here's where I ended up.... finished....for now...
