My family spent summers at our grandparents’ beach cottage located at Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina. The cottage was a big sprawling two-story home with wraparound porches and lots of nooks and crannies for us to explore. Geraniums and Blanket Flowers (Gaillardi) grew wild on the property and made perfect decorations for us to use on the elaborate sandcastles we built. I am now fortunate to live near the beach in California and my beach cottage paintings are reminiscent of those warm summer days in North Carolina .

“Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.” Ralph Waldo Emerson