Curiosity Grounded in Faith
Our April landscape here is a study in contradictions. The snow is finally gone (we hope), but the ground is beyond saturated. Between extra snowmelt and this recent monsoon season, our waters are flooding and the ground is soft and muddy, holding the memory of winter. Patches of green are emerging—nothing dramatic, just small, shy beginnings through the fields of fog. The maples aren’t quite budding in that tender red haze they get each spring, but along the edges of the woods, the first brave shoots are nosing their way up through last year’s leaves. The air feels different now too—lighter, carrying the faintest suggestion it will grow warm. Not quite spring, not quite winter, a sloppy threshold season. I can’t wait for the trilliums, ramps, and morels.
My wide open studio has started to affect my work or maybe it’s the quality of light right now. I’ve been noticing how curiosity has been rising in me the same way these early signs of spring do—quietly, unexpectedly, without a clear path attached. Questions that feel more like invitations. “What if I tried this?” “What if I followed that small tug?” “What if there’s another way?” My collections begin with curiosity instead of a plan. One small thing that catches my attention and I just follow the thread. Currently it’s my color palette–certainly more aspirational than what I’m seeing outside. It’s an old world color palette that I’m not finished exploring. It’s starting to feel like a pretty strong series and maybe even an entire collection. None of my collections come with answers. None arrive holding a map. And yet each one feels like a little spark in the muddiest parts of my days.
Curiosity is faith with its sleeves rolled up.
It asks us to move before we know where we’re going. To explore without a clear destination. To trust the nudge instead of the outcome. For so much of my life, I believed faith was about certainty—being sure, being steady, being anchored. But the older I get, the more I think faith might actually be this quieter thing: the willingness to lean into questions that make no promises. The courage to follow a direction simply because something in you is drawn there.
Curiosity is a compass that points toward aliveness.
It doesn’t shout. It doesn’t demand. It glimmers—just like the first green shoots pushing through cold soil. You don’t know what they’ll become yet; you just know they’re worth tending. When I allow myself to follow these small questions, I feel a kind of clarity that doesn’t come from planning. It comes from noticing. From responding. From trust. This is the place I try to paint from. My greatest successes come from little surprises, full of delight.
Maybe you’re in a season where you don’t have a full vision yet—just the faintest sense of movement inside you. A desire that doesn’t make sense. An idea that won’t leave you alone. A “what if” too persistent to ignore. You don’t need certainty to follow it. You only need enough openness to take a single step in its direction.
Where is curiosity tugging at you right now?
May this early spring invite you to follow the questions that bring you to life, and may curiosity grounded in faith become the compass that leads you gently forward.
