An artist friend recently asked us the question we probably get more than any other: How do you juggle kids, running a gallery, and still find time to paint?
The short answer is time management, of course—but the longer answer is that both Megan and I are, at our core, constant doers. We don’t really sit still, and over the years we’ve built a rhythm that makes it all work.
For me, that rhythm looks like long, uninterrupted stretches at the easel from about 8 p.m. until 1 a.m.—the quietest, most focused hours of the day. Megan is the opposite: she’s up early, painting from 7:30 to 9:30 a.m. before the rest of the day kicks in. On days we’re not at the gallery, we’re usually in the studio, side by side with our brushes.
What makes this possible is the foundation we laid over the last 20 years. Every part of the gallery now runs on systems we carefully built, so it doesn’t require us to reinvent the wheel every week. That structure gives us the space to be both business owners and artists without constantly feeling pulled apart.
The truth is, we’re lucky. Our hobby and our so-called “idle time” is painting—the very thing that’s also our livelihood. It doesn’t always feel like juggling; it feels like living a life that blurs the lines between work and play, responsibility and passion. And that overlap is the real gift.
