First I looked at the prompt and rearanged the headings:

Artist Reflection

I looked at the original headings and rearranged them into something that felt more authentic to me. A dandelion is more fitting than a tree — it represents growth, resilience, and movement. Every part of a dandelion has purpose, and nothing is wasted. The roots, leaves, bloom, and seeds all work together to create beauty and continuation.

For me, the Dandelion of Life symbolizes wholeness. I don’t believe in discarding parts of myself or my past. Every experience — good or hard — becomes part of the soil that shapes who I am. Like a dandelion, I take what life gives me, turn toward the light, and let the wind carry my ideas, care, and creativity wherever they might land.

🌼 The Dandelion of Life

Every part of the dandelion has a purpose. Nothing is wasted; everything contributes to growth. Its roots reach deep, its leaves nourish, its bloom brightens the world, and its seeds carry hope into new places.
This dandelion represents my life — the people, places, and lessons that have shaped me, and the legacies I hope will continue to grow long after I’m gone.

🌾 The Ground — Family Legacy

The soil is rich with the stories of those who came before me — grandparents, parents, and family whose love and lessons still nourish my life. Their strength and creativity form the ground I grow from.

🌱 The Roots — Where I Grew Up

My roots wind through Colorado’s soil and sunlight. The mountains, fields, and open skies taught me endurance, curiosity, and wonder. This is where my love of nature, art, and community first took hold.

🌿 The Leaves — My Family Today

The leaves represent the people who sustain me day to day — my husband, family, animals, and friends. They help me take in the light and breathe out gratitude. They are how I photosynthesize love into energy.

🌸 The Bloom — What Brings Me Joy Each Week

The bloom is the part of me that opens toward joy. It represents the moments that make me happiest — making art, helping others through Moxie, tending the garden, connecting with people, and seeing beauty in small things.

🍃 The Stem — My Skills and Strengths

The stem supports and connects everything. It represents my creativity, compassion, and ability to bring art to others as a form of care. Through it, inspiration travels between my roots and bloom — grounding and expression.

💨 The Seeds / Flyaways — What I Leave for Others

The seeds are the ideas, kindnesses, and creative sparks I hope to release into the world. Each one carries a message of compassion, imagination, and resilience — carried by the wind to plant new hope wherever it lands.

I then filled in each section with meaning — adding words that reflect how every part of the dandelion connects to my experiences and growth.

I then sketched my vision of the dandelion—its roots stretching into the earth, the ground steady beneath it, and its bloom reaching toward the light.

I then translated all the words from my list into a visual form, creating a dandelion sketch that represents how these ideas connect and grow together.

And then, of course, I celebrated the finished sketch with a Ding Dong. Because every good art session deserves chocolate.

🌼 Reflection: The Dandelion of Life

This piece became less about making an image and more about allowing meaning to emerge. As I worked, I realized that creativity often mirrors healing — neither happens in straight lines. Like a dandelion, growth can appear simple on the surface, but underneath it’s complex, resilient, and deeply rooted. I found myself letting go of perfection, trusting that each idea, each word, and even each mistake had a place. The process reminded me that everything we experience—joy, grief, curiosity, and rest—feeds the same soil. Art, for me, continues to be a way of integrating rather than dividing, of seeing beauty in wholeness. The Dandelion of Life is not about what I’ve created, but about recognizing that I am still growing, still blooming, still scattering seeds of myself into the world.

Pathways Through the Vine

Every pathway in life is shaped by moments of growth, challenge, and change. For this Creative Practice Blog post, I chose to create an abstract artwork that represents my journey—my life line, my health, my creativity, and the ways that career, school, relationships, and faith intertwine to form who I am and where I am going.

How I Constructed the Image Series

This series of images was built step by step to reflect different aspects of my personal and professional journey. I began by choosing seven symbolic themes — Life, Health, Creativity, Career, School, Relationships, and Faith — each of which represents a tributary feeding into my pathway forward.

Conceptual Process

I started by creating AI images of my ideas:

A vine for life because it grows, twists, and persists.
A heartbeat rhythm for health because it sustains everything else.
Dandelion seeds for creativity because they are light, free, and full of possibility.
A path that breaks and restarts for career, to show transformation.
A small stream blossoming into flowers for school, to represent learning.
A second entwined vine for relationships, symbolizing support and connection.
A golden star for faith, serving as a guiding light.

🌿 Life Vine

The vine represents my life line — twisting, resilient, and always reaching upward. Its growth is not straight, but full of turns and curves, reflecting the winding journey that defines who I am. Interwoven within the vine is a heartbeat, a reminder that life itself is sustained by constant motion and vitality.

❤️ Health Line

The glowing red heartbeat rhythm symbolizes health, the foundation of all pathways. Its peaks and valleys reflect the moments of fragility and strength I have experienced. Health grounds me, reminding me that well-being is the pulse that sustains every other tributary in my life.

🌬️ Creativity: Dandelions & Breeze

Delicate dandelion seeds float through the air, representing creativity. Like seeds caught in a breeze, ideas drift unexpectedly, sometimes taking root in surprising places. Creativity is light, playful, and ever-present in my life, a constant source of renewal and inspiration.

💼 Career Path

My career began on a rigid and structured path, clear but confining. At a pivotal point, the path broke, creating a visible pause — a gap of uncertainty. From that moment, a new, freer, and more organic path emerged, curving with possibility. This shift represents the courage to step away from one direction and embrace transformation.

📚 School Path

The school path begins as something small and faint, almost tentative. Yet as it rises, it blossoms into brightness, producing glowing flowers that symbolize knowledge and growth. Education is not only about acquiring facts — it is about blossoming into possibility, expanding what feels possible for my future.

💞 Relationship Vine

A second vine, deeper in tone, twists together with the life vine, representing relationships. Where the two vines cross, blossoms bloom, showing the beauty of connection, support, and love. Relationships nourish and challenge me, making my path richer and more meaningful.

🌟 Faith

At the top of my pathway shines a radiant star, symbolizing faith. Its golden glow serves as a guiding light, offering hope, direction, and grounding. Faith illuminates all other pathways, reminding me that I do not walk them alone.

Visual Construction

Each image was generated digitally with a minimalist, abstract style on a black background, allowing the symbolic elements to stand out clearly. I worked one image at a time, layering meaning through:

Color choices (green for growth, red for vitality, gold for hope).
Organic textures (vines, blossoms, leaves) to emphasize life and resilience.
Light and glow effects to convey guidance, energy, and potential.

Narrative Integration

Once the individual images were created, I aligned them with the reflective writing in this blog post. Each graphic became a visual anchor for a specific theme, creating a visual-essay format where art and text reinforce one another. This construction process reflects my larger arts-in-health practice: blending creative expression with storytelling and meaning-making.

Process Reflection
Once I teased apart each section of my journey, I began shaping them into individual symbols: the vine for life, the heartbeat for health, dandelions for creativity, and so on. With each one clarified, I brought them together into a single collage of special moments, weaving the tributaries into a shared space. From there, I worked to connect the pieces visually, allowing the separate symbols to form a unified story. In the end, I painted the combined image, creating a layered work that represents not just isolated experiences but the ways they all intersect and support one another.

✨ Reflection

Together, these seven graphics form a visual map of my life — a journey sustained by health, guided by faith, intertwined with relationships, and nourished by creativity, school, and career. Each path bends, breaks, and blossoms in its own way, but all are connected to the vine of life. This creative practice allowed me to see my journey not as a straight line but as a living, breathing system of growth and connection.

In creating this image series, I found myself reflecting deeply on the ways art can serve as both process and product. By teasing out each theme—life, health, creativity, career, school, relationships, and faith—I created symbolic representations that connected personal growth with course concepts of arts-based research. Combining these elements into one collage allowed me to visualize how the tributaries of my life intertwine, overlap, and sustain one another, mirroring the integrative nature of arts in health practice. The act of constructing these images also became a form of self-care, giving me space to slow down, reflect, and externalize complex emotions in a way that felt healing. From a professional standpoint, this project expanded my artistic development by challenging me to think abstractly while remaining intentional about symbolism and meaning-making. It reinforced the importance of creating work that is both personally authentic and accessible to others as a tool for connection. Ultimately, the finished piece is more than an artwork—it is a visual map of my growth, reminding me how creative practice itself is a vital pathway to resilience.