Colorado

Colorado… Somewhere My Art Found a Home

There are some places you visit and enjoy while you're there.

And then there are places that somehow keep becoming part of your story.

Colorado is starting to feel like the second one.

After leaving Tennessee on my latest trip through America, we headed west to Colorado. There were some pretty exciting reasons for this part of the trip, with artworks of mine now finding homes in two very different places across the state.

But some of my favourite moments happened in between.

Into the Colorado Mountains

After the excitement of the exhibition, I spent an evening horse riding through the Colorado mountains with my friend Tammy, an incredible horse trainer who I've been lucky enough to get to know through my travels in America.

There was no creating, no photographing, no trying to capture something for later.

Just getting on a horse and heading into the mountains as the sun started to disappear.

After constantly travelling, working and thinking about the next thing, it was one of those rare opportunities to simply be where I was.

Good horses, good company and a Colorado sunset.

Sometimes the experiences surrounding the artwork become just as memorable as creating it.

Four Artworks Find a Home in Durango

Another reason Colorado has become pretty special to me is Durango.

Four of my original artworks are now hanging at the Coors Distribution Center there.

There's something slightly surreal about seeing work that began at my studio in Australia hanging permanently on the other side of the world.

Every artwork starts as an idea and spends weeks with me in the studio before eventually leaving and beginning a completely different life somewhere else.

These four travelled a particularly long way.

Knowing they'll now be seen every day by people in Durango makes that journey feel even more special.

And Then There Was Trinidad…

The other major reason for being in Colorado was Trinidad.

Two of my Western artworks had been selected for the Unbridled exhibition at the A.R. Mitchell Museum of Western Art.

From hundreds of entries, both of mine had made it through.

So if I was travelling all the way from Australia, there was no chance I was missing the opportunity to walk into that museum and see them hanging there for myself.

That night became one of the highlights of the entire trip.

But I think that story deserves a space entirely of its own.

Leaving a Little Piece of My Work Behind

By the time I left Colorado, six of my artworks were staying behind.

Four in Durango and two in Trinidad.

That's a pretty special feeling for an Australian artist who spends so much of her time creating quietly from a studio on the other side of the world.

And while my artwork stayed behind, I came home with something else.

More experiences. More stories. More ideas.

That's the strange little cycle my life seems to have fallen into.

I create at home so I can travel…

I travel so I can experience something new…

and eventually, those experiences bring me home wanting to create all over again.

Colorado, I don't think we're finished yet.