The subliminal layer was started at a Paint With the Artist (PWA) class I offer in the Bend community in November and finished in December before I painted it in January 2023. I laid out the stencils for the book cover in November and was able to stencil “Look” and “Inside” and finished the “At” and “What’s” during a December at the next PWA class. I want to be present with those in attendance so I wasn’t able to complete much in terms of painting so after seeing that it took me almost 3 hours to lay down the stencils of “Look At What’s Inside” I modified the class to focus on the guests and (those that come back, I call) alumni.

I was attending a 10x Catalyst group meeting and before we set our goals for the next month, we pray to see what goals God wants us to work on. On September 7, 2023, I heard the call to write an outline for the book. I started the process and implemented a “thinking tool” with questions to help me shape the book to understand success for the reader, before I began writing a word on the story. I took the month to really get clear on what I was to write and why. I shared that “outline” with a few friends and guests from the Paint With Artist to get feedback to make sure the outline made sense. When October hit, the next thing was to start writing. I began writing each chapter and I regularly state that “my name is on the cover” and God wrote it through me. I knew what the name of the title of the book was going to be and reserved the domain on October 25, 2022 at http://godaddy.com . In November, I thought I would use the Paint with the Artist time to lay down the Subliminal Layer and because I underestimated the time it would take away from the class, I focused a little bit of time on stenciling out the first and last words of the book and figured I would complete the other words at the next Paint with the Artist. After all, it felt great that the start of the canvas was started in the creative space I invite the readers to step into…

As I completed more of the book, I knew I wanted to focus my attention on the cover in January since 80% of the book was written and was going through some fine tuned edits and had a great sense of what the story was. I share regularly, “my art is my heart, and my heart is guiding me” so I decided to soak the canvas in a red heart. Because of how life goes, and coming full circle, I started out as a child as an artist and as I have gone through my years art came back full circle. I share the story of how I didn’t think I could make money in art, so I put it on the shelf and over the years, I needed many material things to fulfill a “starving ‘inner’ artist.”

The rest of the painting was a culmination of some of my favorite vibrant colors and when you view this, many relate it to an early version of my first “Subliminal Story Art” concept called Miracle Board.  I finished the painting and ABSOLUTELY loved it. I realize that each painting is a snapshot in time and knew this would be the cover of the book.I have shared that behind every painting is a story and QUITE LITERALLY, this painting has a book behind it, complete with the back of the book being the back of the canvas.

There is a whole write up on what I did to spark the idea for the book and if you would like a copy of the actual “thinking tool” I used in preparing the outline, email me at [email protected]. I invite each person who reads the book to feed their starving “inner” artist and hand sign “Keep Creating” to anyone who buys a book on my website. Enjoy Look At What’s Inside!