Welcome to Nine Lives Studio

My Artistic Journey: A lifelong journey of drawing, painting, and more.

Hello! I'm the artist behind Nine Lives Studio...and it still feels strange to say that.

I always liked to make things but never really thought of myself as an artist. I learned ceramics as a kid, in a neighbor's ceramic studio, but otherwise, didn't really do art - I wanted to be a scientist or a writer.

I fell into craft painting by accident, when I wanted to make a wedding gift for my best friend - a bunny painted on a wooden sign. Another friend taught me to use a scroll saw to cut the wood sign and I followed project instructions to paint the bunny with acrylics. From there, I started cutting my own wood for craft painting ("decorative" or "tole") projects where I could, and discovered I had a particular talent for painting snowmen. I was working by day, and painting by night.

However, I wasn't "good" at decorative painting. I did well for someone self taught, and then took some classes with instructors, but my strokes were never even, I couldn't replicate them consistently, and the like. Even still, it was still something I enjoyed - especially making primitive items that didn't have to be perfect.

I've also always loved glass and how glass looks in the light, and had the opportunity to take stained glass classes. I diverted into stained glass for a while, and found that I enjoyed making fan lamps and nightlights. But again, I wasn't particularly good at it, even though I liked it.

In 2011, I quit my job and started a consulting business, which required up to 80% travel. Crafting and painting fell by the wayside - couldn't bring it with me, and time at home was precious and spent with family and friends. This went on for almost 10 years, until COVID hit and I began working at home.

After 10 years, my acrylic paints had all but dried out, my wood pieces warped due to moisture in the basement, and I lost a lot of my limited stained glass skills. When I was ready to start art/crafting again, I looked for something that required minimal supplies, could be portable for travel, and would not suffer harm if things got busy again. Enter watercolors.

I had taken a watercolor class a few years earlier with an instructor who changed my outlook on painting. Her mantra was, "It's only paper...", so it was easy to start over if you wanted to. It was a lightning strike - no more expensive pieces of wood and trying to cover up mistakes!

Lightning strike number two was that my painting didn't have to look like the instructor's - which was the mark of success in tole painting.

I've spent the last few years experimenting with watercolors and trying to learn the "right way" to use them...and after working with several different instructors and following tutorials on YouTube, discovered there is no "right way". Understanding how the paints, paper and water interact and learning what you like is what's important. Still working on that...but every now and then the stars align and something really terrific happens.

I also started working with graphite and colored pencils in the last couple of years. I've felt all my life that I couldn't draw, and I wanted to learn. It feels like a roadblock to not be able to sketch or draw well. I took some classes to learn about each medium and how to use it, and worked on colored pencil projects following patterns. So I was drawing...sort of. But still following patterns.

Then I found a week of classes on how to use graphite pencils, how to sketch, and how to use colored pencils, working from reference images instead of patterns. The graphite classes were another lightning strike...they made sense and I could do it well enough that I was inspired to try using my own images - and suddenly the Snarky Cats were born!

Nine Lives Studio, therefore reflects several things in those nine lives...my artistic journey, the changing stages of life, and of course, the snarky cats!