I am an American artist who has recently made the life changing transition from living a comfortable life in Philadelphia, PA, to starting a new adventure in Porto, Portugal.
It was clear in my early childhood that I was destined to be a maker. What wasn’t clear as how that path was going to manifest itself in my life. My early adult years were about aimlessly wandering around the forest of life without a sense of direction. This was followed by a period of self discovery and getting my sh*t together. By the time I was in my mid 40s, I had built a nice life for myself. I had a great career, owned my apartment in Manhattan, and then met and married my amazing husband. All the while I had put my creative self on the back burner for the better part several decades.
It has been an uneven journey to where I am today. Over the years, I’ve acquired a wide variety of skills and talents. Some through sheer need, others as a direct result of my endless curiosity. This past several years have enabled me to resign from the paid workforce and explore various mediums of creating art. I have done woodcut print making, digital generative art making, various painting techniques with acrylics and oils, and finally working with hot wax creating encaustics.
It is working with hot wax and making encaustic works that I find the most interesting and what excites me to no end. There are a million ideas floating about my head. I am now tasked with filtering them down to a realistic quantifiable body of work. This is where I am at now. I will be spending much of 2025 working on my first serious series to establish my mark on the world.
It is never too late to make a start, it could be argued that starting is what we do every day, all the time, at every moment. Each moment we can make a change, begin anew or continue unthinkingly with the old. I choose new beginnings as I move through my life, I savor what I have experienced and move on to fresh experiences . . . few rules apply. Join me as I explore this next stage of my creative life.
Devyn Caldwell
