Hello, happy new year and welcome to another episode of the savvy painter podcast. Yes, yes, yes, I'm back. Here we go. We're ready for 2022.

Listen, I want to tell you, thank you so much for your patience and love and support.

While I took the time to regroup and take time and space for myself. You guys have been amazing. If you've been

listening to the podcast for a while now you know that this is the longest that I've been away and I am so so happy to be

back talking with you again. Before I forget to mention it, the podcast, I'm going to drop several new episodes this

coming Thursday, and then we will resume our weekly schedule.

I thought the New Year's was a perfect time to do that.

And if you're new to the podcast, hello, hello and welcome.

2021 was a very challenging year for me.

I am not gonna lie.

It kind of sucked big time.

But with big challenges comes tremendous growth opportunities.

And I kind of feel like, I don't know, like the Phoenix coming out of the fire

or if you like me are a huge Game of Thrones fans it feels like a bit like

when Dinarius came walking out of the fire all cleansed and new.

It's just kind of like, wow, all right. My life and my outlook has been completely transformed and I am really, really excited to share with you what I've learned and how it applies to you and your art making.

So I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but art has such a healing power and at its core I think it connects us to our

our inner wisdom our truest self, our highest self, and when we're connected to that, I believe that we're connected to each other on, you know, kind of a deeply spiritual level. It connects us to unconditional love.

Getting a little woo here, I know. That reminds me of a conversation that I had with the artist Andrew Salgado. We talked about going to the

studio as if we're going to the Church of Art and that always makes me laugh. It always stuck with me because art to me is, it's my sanctuary.

It is the thing that I've always turned to for comfort and joy and it centers me and it connects me to my most authentic and wise self.

So the other day I was writing in my morning journal and I was doing an exercise that my coach recommended to me which is to ask that deep inner self what do you need right now? And in this exercise, she had me write that

...