Creative Courage: Discovering What Was Already There

I did something recently that I've never done before. I took one of my old paintings, put it back on my easel, and started painting into it.

I thought I was reworking an old canvas. I didn't expect it to make me look at life differently.

Not touching up a spot or trying to restore it. I began painting over some areas, keeping others, and seeing what might emerge from what was already there.

The original was an abstract acrylic called In the Midst. I painted it seven years ago, when I had only been painting for about three years.

And it looked like it. 😂

There was tons of texture, some of it pretty random. My skills were still developing and I was experimenting with just about everything.

But I knew why I wanted to paint.

I wanted to somehow make visible what I was experiencing with God—encounter, intimacy, revelation, and glory. I knew what I wanted my art to carry long before I had the skills to pull it off.

Which is probably why my art teacher at the time nicknamed me Creatively Courageous Claudia.

I was willing to try––so willing to learn that I went to art classes for homeschooled middle schoolers!

There I was, the grown woman in the room, learning right alongside them. 😂

Although intimidated, I didn't particularly care what it looked like. I wanted to learn how to paint.

Seven years later, creative courage looked a little different.

My art coach encouraged me to go through older work that no longer represented where I am as an artist. Sell it, donate it, paint over it—just don't keep presenting something because you once made it.

That's how In the Midst ended up back on my easel.

I thought about gessoing over it.

But instead, I found myself working INTO it.

The old painting began turning into a huge cliff with a waterfall. The sky changed. Light appeared. Some areas disappeared altogether while others became part of the new landscape.

And all that random texture I put there seven years ago?

Turns out some of it is exactly what this painting needed.

I've started calling the new painting Glory Falls.

And that's when this became about more than rescuing an old canvas.

Because I started thinking about how quickly we're willing to dismiss things from earlier seasons of our lives.

Sometimes rightly so.

We've all outgrown things. We've made choices we wouldn't make now. We've believed things we've since reconsidered. Hopefully we're not the same people we were seven years ago.

But that doesn't mean you have to throw away everything from an earlier season.

Some of it may simply need to be seen differently.

You may have learned something during a season you thought was wasted that you need now. There may be a dream you set aside because you didn't have the skill, money, confidence, or opportunity to do anything with it then.

Something you tried and weren't particularly good at.

A relationship that taught you something.

A failure that changed you.

Even an idea that seemed a little random at the time.

We don't always know what will matter later.

I certainly didn't stand in front of In the Midst seven years ago thinking, I'd better put this texture here because I'm going to need it for a waterfall in 2026. 😂

I was simply working with what I knew then.

Now I know more.

And I think that's one of the gifts of growing—not just growing as an artist, but as a person and with God.

We get to look again.

Not to live in the past or try to recreate it, but to see it with the eyes we have now.

What still belongs?

What doesn't?

What have I learned?

What did God put there that I couldn't recognize at the time?

And what could He do with it now?

I don't think growth always requires a blank canvas.

Sometimes the invitation may be to courageously paint into what's already there.

That's certainly what happened with Glory Falls.

It's becoming a very different painting from In the Midst, but the old painting hasn't disappeared. Its history is literally underneath the new work, and in some places you can still see it.

That makes this original particularly interesting to me.

Whoever eventually owns Glory Falls won't simply own the image of a waterfall. They'll own a painting with seven years of history physically embedded in it—an early work and a current work existing on the same canvas.

I love that.

I'm not showing you the entire finished painting quite yet. I'm setting up a new space where I can properly photograph my originals, and I want Glory Falls to have its moment when I can show you what it really looks like.

For now, I'll show you In the Midst. When I can properly photograph Glory Falls, I'll show you what became of it.

And while you're looking, perhaps there's something in your own life worth looking at again.

Not necessarily to preserve it.

Not necessarily to throw it away.

Just to see what might still be there.