The first image release for A NeverEnding Story is the fabulous "Zenful Zebra"!  This beautiful creature is roaming the abundant grasslands with a colorful little birdie perched on his back for a free ride, while butterflies flit around from flower to flower on the afternoon breeze.  Currently prints are available with more fun products coming soon to show your love for zebras and all wildlife.

Some fun facts about zebras:  There are three species of zebras, all native to Africa, they are the plains zebra, mountain zebra and the endangered Grevy's zebra.  The Grevy's zebra is endangered due to hunting and habitat loss, but there are conservation organizations working with local groups, and using collars to track and protect these special zebras to preserve for generations to come.

​Zebras are suprisingly fast, able to run up to 40mph, and constantly on the move searching for grazing land and water, often traveling hundreds of miles to find the best food around.

Zebras are actually not a horse or a donkey, although more closely related to the donkey, but are in the same family called Equidaes. 

Zebras are herbivores, which means they eat plants, grasses, and roots.  They are also like a camel and go around 5 days without water.

One of the coolest things about zebras is that each one has it's own unique stripe pattern.  No one is sure why, whether it be to identify each other, act as sunscreen, ward off predators by confusing them or a combination of different reasons.  But, regardless they sure are one of the most beautiful creatures!  And unlike most animals, their skin is actually black.

Zebras are social creatures and usually travel in herds of 15 to 20 families, sometimes with 1,000s of animals in a herd.  This helps protect them from predators and they will form a semi-circle when threatened and have a very strong kick and bite, best not to mess around with them!  They also run in zig zag patterns to confuse any predators.

I hope you enjoyed learning a little bit about these beautiful animals, and stay tuned for the next art drop puzzle piece from A NeverEnding Story!

​This puzzle is A Neverending Story...I am going to continue to add new puzzle pieces for an undetermined amount of time, but hopefully for a very long time!  Each piece of this puzzle will feature an animal, some of them endangered, some recovered from the endangered list through conservation efforts and others just because, haha! 

My goal for this work of puzzle art is to create a beautiful, colorful celebration of animals and the natural world.  We are all interconnected, and share this amazing planet that we get to call home.  By creating this puzzle and sharing it with art collectors and animal lovers around the world, I hope to create a sense of togetherness, we ARE in this together, and we need to be aware of our impact on the environment and other species, and be sure to make it positive.  Let's join together and help preserve and nurture this beautiful world that we all share, and celebrate the wonder of all the beautiful creatures that work in symbiotic harmony to create the most beautiful puzzle...planet earth.

A portion of the proceeds from each puzzle piece will be donated to ReWild, an organization I have collaborated with, and contribute to, to help “conserve the diversity of life on Earth".

I'm finally getting started on something I've had in the planning stages for awhile now, and I'm soooooo excited about it!!  I've always loved puzzles, and used to spend hours and hours toiling away as a child to pass the long winter days in Alaska.  I would disappear into my own little world and wouldn't even notice what was happening around me as I intently focused on finding that elusive piece.  There is just something so satisfying about putting the pieces together to create a final image.  I always liked the larger puzzles, 1,000 pieces or more, there was more of a challenge and the reward was that much sweeter when the final piece was put into place.

As an adult I still work on puzzles, oftentimes with my daughter, making it a family affair now.  And during the pandemic quarantine it was the perfect time to really delve into the fun that is puzzling.  It also got my wheels turning on wanting to create my own puzzles, initially it was just thoughts of taking existing art and using them for traditional puzzles (which I now have, click on pic below), but then I came upon these wooden shaped puzzle pieces and the lightbulb went off!  

I knew I just had to do something epic with these puzzle pieces and the more I thought about it, the better my idea formulated.  And I FINALLY started working on it yesterday!  And it's turning out so good, I can barely contain my excitement!!  It's going to be quite the challenge I can tell already.  It is a puzzle in the truest sense of the word in a couple of ways, one, it's obviously made with puzzle pieces that fit together, and two it's a mental puzzle challenge for me to create a design that flows seamlessly from one piece to the other.  To be cohesive and yet keep each piece individual and standalone.  

This puzzle is A Neverending Story...I am going to continue to add new puzzle pieces for an undetermined amount of time, but hopefully for a very long time!  Each piece of this puzzle will feature an animal, some of them endangered, some recovered from the endangered list through conservation efforts and others just because, haha! 

My goal for this work of puzzle art is to create a beautiful, colorful celebration of animals and the natural world.  We are all interconnected, and share this amazing planet that we get to call home.  By creating this puzzle and sharing it with art collectors and animal lovers around the world, I hope to create a sense of togetherness, we ARE in this together, and we need to be aware of our impact on the environment and other species, and be sure to make it positive.  Let's join together and help preserve and nurture this beautiful world that we all share, and celebrate the wonder of all the beautiful creatures that work in symbiotic harmony to create the most beautiful puzzle...planet earth.

A portion of the proceeds from each original puzzle piece will be donated to ReWild, an organization I have collaborated with, and contribute to, to help “conserve the diversity of life on Earth".

I wanted to offer something fun, collectable and affordable for absolutely everyone and came upon the perfect answer, stickers!  Who doesn't love stickers?  They are so much fun for everyone, for kids to place all over everything (sorry moms and dads), and adults and teens to use for journaling and scrapbooking, or to place all over everything, haha!  And of course they will have wildlife, nature themes as the main subject as that is my passion, raising awareness for animal conservation!

I have sticker sheets and single stickers available in lots of fun designs, from Under the Sea compilation, to black and white coloring designs on a full sheet and more.  But, my ABSOLUTE favorite is the new holographic stickers I just listed, and they are selling like hotcakes!  And easy to see why, they are just mesmerizing and captivating, catching the light and creating a shimmering cascade of colors from every angle.  I have video of a couple of them on my Instagram Reels page to show just how fascinating they are when catching the light.

I have more sticker sheets and holographic singles on order.  Including another art palette design, like the giraffe one above, such a great, unique sticker that no one else is doing.  The other design is from one of my wooden heart paintings, it's going to be amazing!!  

Another great thing about the holographic stickers is that they are limited edition, I will only be doing a run of 150 stickers for each design.  So, not only are they super pretty, lots of fun to play with, they are also collectable; see how many you can collect!

​A portion of the proceeds from every sticker will be donated to ReWild, a conservation organization I have collaborated with, and contribute to, to help “conserve the diversity of life on Earth".

June 21st is a day to celebrate the lanky, kinda goofy, and uniquely beautiful giraffe.  This is an annual event to raise support, create awareness and shed light on the challenges giraffes face in the wild. By supporting World Giraffe Day (WGD), you directly help save giraffe in Africa. With only approximately 117,000 giraffe remaining in the wild, we need to always be vigilant on increasing their numbers in the wild (source: https://giraffeconservation.org/world-giraffe-day/​)

I created this painting with a fun, carefree vibe in mind.  This is how all animals should be able to live, be free, in the wild, as they always have, without constantly battling extinction and loss of habitat.  Once we are aware of how we can help and preserve and rewild animals to their natural lands we can prevent species from becoming extinct and bring them back from being endangered.  

Some fun giraffe facts to share: 

1. They are the tallest mammals (and land animals) on the planet, just their legs along are taller than most people, averaging around 6 feet.
2. This one really surprised me!  Whenever I see a video of them running, they look a bit awkward, haha, but, they can run up to 35mph!!
3. A giraffes spots are unique to each individual, it's like a humans fingerprints, or a whales tale.  Not two animals spots art the same.
4. They never sleep for more than 30 minutes in 24 hours!  And only through several quick little naps.  Giraffes also mostly sleep standing up, they rarely ever lie down for anything, even giving birth they stand up.
5. They only need to drink every few days, they get most of their water from leaves.  When they do drink from ponds they have to spread their legs out in an awkward looking pose as their long neck still isn't long enough to reach the ground.

This painting is now being enjoyed in it's new home, a nursery for a baby born last year.  I hope it will always inspire him to love animals and be an advocate for kindness towards our fellow planet dwellers of all kinds.

A portion of the proceeds from my MAD wonderland collection sales, is donated to Re:wild (formerly know as Global Wildlife Conservation), an organization I have collaborated with, and continue to contribute to. "We believe that together, we can protect and restore those ecosystems critical to the health of our planet—from the Amazon to Australia and from Borneo to our own backyards. We are excited to embark on this journey, because we believe that, together, we can rewild our world.." (Co-founded by Leonardo Dicaprio.)

My brother Robin, who splits his time between Ketchikan, AK and Meyers Chuck, AK, our two Alaskan hometowns, wanted me to paint a special painting of his boat the "Sultan".  Hope I did it justice!

​My brother who lives in Ketchikan, Alaska, and works at the local shipyard in the winter months, also has a Salmon troller that he fishes out of in the summers in our little hometown village of Meyers Chuck, AK called "Sultan". He is an avid San Francisco 49ers fan, so of course he had to give ode to them with his boat, haha!! Hence the colors and the flag proudly saluting fellow 49ers fans...or taunting their rival Seahawks fans, all who pass him by on the Alaskan fishing grounds.

​The "Sultan" is the oldest troller in Ketchikan, and is being recognized by the Ketchikan Historical society for it's long standing history of fishing the Alaskan waters for almost a century. The wooden boat was built in 1926, in Seattle, WA. Some of the characteristics of the Sultan are: it is a double ended fir planked power troller, OAL 43'' long with a 10' beam and has a 6' draft. It is documented with the USCG, number: 226195, and more information on the boat can be found by entering the doc number on the Coast Guards website.

​Of course with a boat that is almost a century old, and made of wood, living in the harsh climate of Alaska the boat requires continuous maintenance and costs to keep it seaworthy, but my brother is up for the task and regularly spends 300 hours, and $5,000 a year to keep her running. But, it is worth it to live out his dream and join the ranks of all the other Alaskan fishermen in our family.

Interesting side note, it is the 2nd red power troller boat in the family that is unmistakeable in Southeast Alaska.  Our uncle and aunt, Rory and Marion, also fish the same grounds with their boat the "Isis".  Maybe our brother James, and cousin JoDean and her jusband Joe, need to paint their trollers red now too, hmmmmm.

Looking forward to seeing the colorful Sultan pass by in front of MAD Island while I am working up there this summer, building my dream artist retreat and seeing his dream boat fish on by.  

Click on the photo below to watch the making of the original painting on YouTube