Artist Appreciation Month Did you know that August is "Artist Appreciation Month"? In honor of this month, I was encouraged by Patience Brewster to write a blog about the artist that has inspired my work . I jumped at the opportunity because I know who "my" artist is. I couldn't wait to tell the story. In July, 2011, I resumed a friendship that I thought was long lost. My friend and I had not spoken in a few years. We had just both been busy, trying to live our lives and deal with the day-to-day. My friend emailed to say hello and that he had found my website and spent a couple hours looking at my paintings. At the time, all I did was watercolors. I felt like that was the work I was supposed to do and couldn't really do anything else. We began corresponding through email and picked up our friendship, just like we had last spoken yesterday. We had always been able to talk to each other and open up to each other withou...