Have you ever stood at the precipice of an approaching storm and thought, this is it? Or did you find yourself down on a bent knee in disheveled humility, giving thanks for having just survived one?

Have you ever been so loved that all of life echoes the sunlit field of radiating bluebonnets? Or because seeing a flower still reaching for the sun amidst destruction and chaos has given you hope to go on?

If you have, how do you best communicate that? Words can only go so far and then fall to silence. So then what? For Scotty, that was to pick up his brush after years of sitting collecting dust and, in oil paint, pick up where the words had stopped.

Initially attending college and studying fine art, Scotty dropped out to honorably serve his country in the US Navy. There, he met the love of his life and was discharged under Don’t Ask, don’t Tell. After dusting himself off, he entered the civilian workforce and left his art behind. 

Only upon returning to native and beloved Texas, where he was born and grew up, did he begin painting again. Seeing the first field of bluebonnets that spring drove him back to his passion for art, which had never left. Combined with the devastating losses of those first years back, the good and bad memories therein only spurred his desire to create art.

We all have a story to tell, filled with rapturous joy, beauty, devastating heartbreak and sadness. Such is life, but with hope and grace, we survive the tempests and enjoy the blooms of life.