2025: Year in Review with Gratitude

As the clock struck midnight, I was looking back at 2025 as bridge from fledgling creative to emerging artist. Not two years ago I was painting in my recliner, too nervous to call myself an artist. Tonight, I’m ending 2025 with a studio full of canvases, a shop full of prints, and a community that shows up every Wednesday night to paint and chat with me live! Here’s what happened in between:

• Launched a collaboration with my husband to provide limited edition watercolor paintings for his table-top role-playing game (TTRPG) “Makundo IV." Link to my husband's website by clicking on this watercolor:

  

  
  

• Had my first ever tent event as an artist

• Continued my Lesser-Known Heroes series with Nancy Wake, “The White Mouse”

• Advanced my Admirable Masculinity series with The Fireman:

• Painted my love letter to childhood dance in “Rehearsal at Dusk”

• Took on my biggest watercolor yet with “Volcano Caldera”

• Fell in love with texture in “New Frontiers” and “Fractured” paintings

• Had originals accepted into exhibitions and found forever homes

• And somehow convinced my youngest son to co-host a livestream with me on Christmas Eve:

None of this would have happened without you — the late-night chatters, the print buyers, the quiet encouragers who leave comments that keep me going. Thank you for believing in this midlife artist while she continues to figure it out.

Here’s to 2026: more paint, more stories, and more livestreams every Wednesday!

With gratitude and a very messy palette,

Stephanie

MidLifeArtist