The Story

Hi there and welcome to my store!

I’m Michele and it’s wonderful to have you here.

I’ve always loved painting. I was the child always volunteering to paint whatever my parents wanted painted around the house. But I had no idea about the world of texture in painting until 5 years ago when I discovered Old World finishes and immediately fell in love. I’ve been trained in Old World finishes, and my art represents my style in that domain. It was what I’d been looking for my whole life.

Here’s why:

I don’t believe in perfection. I believe in wholeness. The wholeness of a tree in front of you. The wholeness of you - the whole human being that you are. That is the feel of you. The feel of our world. The feel of our families passed down through a thousand generations. The blights of our past, the triumphs of our successes. For me, Old World finishes captures the wholeness of nature under the weight of time. That’s what makes this work so beautiful. The chipped places. The cracks. The aging.  

My favorite medium is venetian plaster because I love the look and feel of old stone. I also dabble in gilding and gesso and I love woodworking. I live in the Panhandle of Florida and I make a lot of my frames from trees downed in Hurricane Michael at my childhood home. I care deeply about the Earth and not wasting our precious resources. All of the ingredients that we use to make our products are water based and environmentally friendly. One percent of all of our profits goes toward planting trees.

I’m looking to see what’s already here that we’re missing. Being grateful for the richness of our differences, our desires, our hopes and dreams. And how when the world comes together, we’re more. I want you to feel the ancient in yourself and in others and feel the wholeness of us, the love, not the separation. We need that now more than ever. But it’s already in you, and it’s already in us. It’s been there all along.

My message, if I were pressed to offer one, would be that our pain is the most overlooked source of depth, character, and beauty and wisdom in the world.

Thank you for stopping by. I’m happy to have you here anytime.

All my heart, gratitude and deepest love to you.