I know this is a blogger taboo to say, but I assure you I have a perfectly reasonable explanation for my year long absence and I can some it up in three words: Inness Berkeley Sours.

Everybody loves a baby!

Last year around this time I found out I was pregnant. I did not handle pregnancy well. I have never experienced such exhaustion and it was all I could do to muster up the energy to shower before crawling back to bed for the day.

Needless to say I didn’t get much art done. It was hard and I took it as a personal failure. Looking back I’m reminding myself that this is a phase of life and to not be so hard on myself (easier said than done!). But now I am slowly getting back into the swing of things with a beautiful giggly four month little girl in tow (and those arduous nine months are far in the past).

Inness, being the daughter of two artists, was befittingly named after an artist (surprise, surprise) an American landscape painter named George Inness.

George Inness was a tonalist painter in the 19th century who used a restricted color scheme to evoke mood and luminosity. He was very spiritual and believed there was a connection between nature and God. He said, “The true use of art is, first, to cultivate the artist’s own spiritual nature.” It is rumored that, just before he died, he was marveling at a sunset when he cried out to God how beautiful it was before collapsing and passing away.

Before Inness was born, a dear family asked if we were naming her after W.B. Yeats’ poem. I had never read it before and fell in love with Yeats’ lyrical descriptions of his childhood escape to an Irish cabin.

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made: Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee; And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey, I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

As a gift, one of the daughters in the family painted a beautiful set of three paintings featuring the words to Yeats’ poem. She endearingly changed the spelling to “Innessfree.”

It’s been fun surrounding our little girl with original art. There’s something special about knowing a unique set of hands carefully and lovingly crafted the work, giving it life and telling a story.

Here’s a set of gold foil prints Bryan and I purchased for the nursery made by a local Utah artist.

And what better reason to have a kiddo than to have a perpetual model? And for FREE!

Of course she only holds still like, never. And falls asleep on the job. But then only sleeps for fifteen to twenty minutes tops. And never stops eating. And bosses me around. All the time.

I guess you get what you pay for.