To Make the World More Beautiful 18x24 Mixed Media on Paper

$324.00

To Make the World More Beautiful

18x24 • Mixed Media on Canvas

This piece was inspired by Mrs. Rumphius, one of my most beloved childhood books. Before painting, I inscribed a few lines that have stayed with me for decades:

“You must also do something to make the world more beautiful.”
“When I grow old, I too will travel the world and live by the sea.”

I began with a soft yellow wash, then added three red flowers and blue tones that, unexpectedly, echoed the colors of my childhood bedroom. As I worked, I felt the layered emotions of who I once was and who I have become—the young girl dreaming of travel, of the sea, of a meaningful life, and the woman who has lived many of those dreams in ways she couldn’t have predicted.

I have traveled the world. I no longer ache for constant movement the way I once did. I visit the sea often now because someone I love lives there. Maybe I will live by the sea someday. Maybe I won’t. Either way, I am no longer longing in the same way—I am living inside the life that arrived.

This piece holds that reconciliation. The gentle understanding that dreams don’t always come true exactly as imagined, but they often arrive sideways, softened, truer than expected. And that every day, through art—through expressing feeling, grief, healing, joy—I am doing the thing I promised myself long ago.

Trying, in my own small way, to make the world more beautiful.