I didn’t start The Curated Life last week or even last year.
This brand has been growing quietly in the background of my life since 2021, through one of the hardest chapters I’ve ever faced.
In 2020, my mom was diagnosed with dementia. Not long after, my daughter began facing health challenges from a tick-borne infection.
Everything felt heavy, uncertain, and completely out of my control.
But something inside me refused to give up.
I needed a place to put the grief. A space where I could process, breathe, and reconnect with something that felt like mine.
So I began creating. Not for anyone else but for me.
That’s when Curated Art and Living was born. Not as a business at first, but as a thread of hope.
It was the only thing I could hold onto when life was unraveling around me.
A vision that I clung to when everything else felt like too much.
And here’s what I learned:
When you create from a place of survival, it turns into something sacred.
“beautiful” in a way that fit what I thought was expected.
Up until then, I had painted bold, realistic florals in vivid oils. Structured, intentional, “beautiful” in a way that fit what I thought was expected.
But something shifted. I didn’t want control. I wanted freedom.
So I let go.
I began painting with neutrals.
I let plaster speak. I let Indian ink flow across the canvas wherever it wanted to go.
I stopped forcing the image and started listening to what wanted to come through.
“For the first time, my art started to look like me.
Soft. Honest. Textured. Unpolished. Real.”
For the first time, my art started to look like me.
Soft. Honest. Textured. Unpolished. Real.
It mirrored how I dressed, how I lived, how I was learning to be.
And in that surrender, I found calm. I found beauty. I found myself.
In 2023, Franz Dopf Gallery became the next chapter of the vision.
It gave me a place to bring community and creativity together. To lift other artists, curate exhibitions, and give art the space it deserved.
I poured everything into it. And while it brought joy, it also showed me the cost of building without alignment.
That experience became a mirror. And what I saw reflected back was clear:
The Curated Life was always the path. I just needed to live through the storm to claim it.
So here I am, stepping into the next chapter of my life and brand. Not because everything’s perfect, but because I finally believe that it doesn’t have to be.
The Curated Life isn’t just about art. It’s about remembering that your life is your art.
It’s about beauty as a form of healing.
It’s about simplicity, stillness, and creating space to come home to yourself.
If this brand could speak for me, it would say:
You are welcome as you are.
No more striving.
Sit down.
Be yourself.
You are heard. You are not judged. You are enough.
That’s what I needed to hear most of my life.
And now, it’s what I want to offer to others.
Because through this brand, I’m becoming who I really am:
Confident. Authentic. Beautiful.
And if this speaks to you, I hope you’ll stay a while.
You don’t have to fix yourself to belong here.
You just have to arrive.
Welcome to The Curated Life.
Curator. Artist. Holistic living advocate.
I created The Curated Life as a sanctuary for intentional living. Where art, design, wellness, and soulful practices meet. With roots in both natural health and creative expression, my work is about curating not just spaces, but lives that feel deeply aligned.
Here, I share reflections, rituals, and creations that speak to the heart and heal the spirit.
This isn’t about perfection. It’s about resonance.
Welcome home.
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Spring isn’t just a season, it’s a soft invitation to begin again. To open the windows, shake out the dust, and make space for something new to take root. If you’re like me, the urge to clear and clean hits hard this time of year. After months (or years, let’s be honest) of accumulation, clutter, and life happening at full speed, the mess starts to weigh on the spirit.
There was a time I questioned whether beauty really mattered.
With everything going on in the world, it felt small. Frivolous, even. But I’ve come to learn something that changed everything:
I didn’t start The Curated Life last week or even last year.
This brand has been growing quietly in the background of my life since 2021, through one of the hardest chapters I’ve ever faced.
