Some kids watched cartoons. I watched Bob Ross.

My mom would turn him on and I would sit through the entire episode without fussing, completely still, completely captivated. That was probably the first sign. Give me a crayon, a pencil, a coloring book, and I was gone. Art class was my favorite from the moment I walked into one. I was the kid who always excelled, always pushed further, always drew when I should have been doing something else.

What really shaped the way I draw now was Sailor Moon. Anime opened up a whole world of anatomy, movement, and expression that I couldn't stop studying. By middle school I was deep in the art program, learning color theory and painting, absorbing everything. I was learning fast enough that I became one of the only kids in my grade to earn a full summer scholarship to the Ringling School of Art in Florida. My teachers thought anime was a dead end. That's what I got in on.

Then we moved to Colorado. New state, new school, no art program like the one I had left behind. My closest friend lived too far to walk to. This was before texting was normal, before you could just stay connected from anywhere. I was a teenager who had gone from a full life to the mountains with nothing familiar around me.

But I still had my art. I filled every sketchbook I could find. It was the one thing that kept me going when everything else felt out of reach. That's when I learned what art actually was to me. Not a hobby. Not a class. A lifeline.

Things did get better eventually. We moved down the mountain, I found my people again, other artists I could learn from and create alongside. That community meant everything. And then, the way life goes, we all scattered into our own worlds.

I applied to an art school in Denver. Got in. Looked at the price tag and walked away. A hundred thousand dollars in three years wasn't something I could justify, no matter how much I wanted it. So I kept teaching myself. Learned Photoshop. Made the transition from traditional to digital, though my love for traditional art never left. It just became something I do for joy rather than for work.

There was a point where I almost lost it entirely.

I got into an abusive relationship. Every time I tried to draw, to decompress, to find that quiet place art had always given me, he found a way to take it away. He chipped away at it until I was afraid to pick up a pencil. Afraid to open my computer. I made my escape while he was out of town and I rebuilt my life from the ground up, but even after I was out the fear stayed. The voice that said my art was trash stayed. Even surrounded by other artists while I got back on my feet, I struggled to create. The thing that had always saved me felt just out of reach.

And then I met Steven.

He understood what I had been through without me having to explain all of it. He was endlessly patient and endlessly excited about whatever I made next. He is still one of my biggest supporters and a huge part of why I healed. Why I found my way back.

Once I did, I wanted to challenge myself. To try something I had never done before. I designed the first "She Carries the Universe Within" with no fancy brushes, no shortcuts, just reference images and the tools I had. I hunted down space photography. Looked for images of the cosmos that you don't normally see. And I fell completely in love. It tied into something I had been collecting my whole life without realizing it -- moons, stars, suns, the feeling that the universe is bigger and more magical than the world tries to convince you it is.

I was addicted. I leaned into it fully. Space, stars, celestial themes woven into everything that made sense. I joined artist communities, collaborated with creators around the world, kept pushing my work further.

Life hit hard again. Grief has a way of doing that. I lost my two cats. Then in 2021 I lost my youngest niece. When you lose someone you love, especially when you feel like you don't have the right to grieve them, it takes something from you. Getting back to my art after that was a fight. A real one.

But I fought for it. Because I knew what it had always been for me. The thing that kept me company in the Colorado mountains. The thing that survived an abusive relationship. The thing that comes back no matter how many times life tries to take it.

I'm back. More than back.

I'm Casey, an illustrator now based in Haarlem, Netherlands, where I moved with my husband on a DAFT visa and built Starlight Falls Studios into something real. My work pulls from the cosmos and from the life I'm living right here on the ground. Every piece is hand-illustrated on my digital tablet, bringing that celestial, whimsical magic into the everyday objects that fill your space.

I once watched a video where a man on a stage told a young artist to share her work, because there are people out there who want it without knowing it yet. You never know what your art does for someone.

That stuck with me. So I share it.

And now you're here.