What Teaching Taught Me About Courage + Curiosity

Hey, hello there, friend!

If you’ve taken a class with me, you know something magical happens when we paint together: the room becomes a field of intention, color, and curiosity, no one works the same way twice, and every canvas carries its own heartbeat.

Teaching art isn’t just about technique, it’s a mirror. The moments that surprise me most aren’t the “finished” paintings, but the shifts inside the people making them. The way someone’s expression softens when they let go of perfection… the quiet pride that rises when a “mistake” turns into magic… that’s the real lesson.

When I lead a workshop, I’m not just guiding a brush, I’m witnessing how each person steps into themselves. Watching that has changed how I approach my own work.

Recently, I began a daily painting practice, not as a challenge, but as a way of showing up without knowing exactly where it’s going. It’s taught me something very close to what I see in my students: the value of presence over perfection, curiosity over certainty, and courage over comfort.

And those are the lessons that stick, both in the studio and in life.

There’s something transformative about sitting beside another human with a palette and a brush. People arrive with doubt (“I’m not creative”), and leave noticing the light in a new way. They discover that mistakes are welcome, color is expressive, and intuition is stronger than self-criticism.

That’s what art can do: it invites us into a conversation with ourselves, sometimes soft, sometimes surprising, always alive.

This Thursday, I get to witness this again in Hermosa Beach, at Silvios — a space that already feels like home. Painting as communion. As play. As presence. If you’ve ever wondered what it feels like to create without judgment, without pressure, that’s where magic lives.

And if you don’t take a class, that’s okay, you can still meet that energy in your own way.

Maybe it’s a page in your sketchbook while the coffee warms your hand. Maybe it’s a moment of color under your fingertips. The invitation is always the same: come as you are.

Join us this THURSDAY (Jan 29th) for my first art class of the year! SIGN UP HERE!

Color your life.

Drica