Jen Decker has been many things to many people. She can confidently proclaim her role as a mother, wife, daughter, sister, cousin, aunt, friend, and teacher but it took years of creating before she was able to assuredly call herself an artist.

Truly, this was a journey decades in the making. Decker had spent thirty years as an elementary school teacher in pastoral Hudson Valley, a vocation that provided her with a palette to work on well before she picked up a paintbrush. “As a teacher you’re always trying to make something beautiful from nothing,” she says. 

In spite of always feeling this creative spark within herself, Decker never dared to apply the artist label to herself. In college she would go to museums with friends and while she would admire and be stirred by the works, she felt intimidated to discuss these thoughts and feelings with her friends. She hadn’t pursued a degree in the arts or sought formal training so who was she to have a valid opinion on these works that these artists had poured their heart and souls into?

When she entered the academic world, she encountered someone who would begin to reshape her thinking. “I worked with an amazing art teacher who a lot of the other teachers criticized,” she says. “He was criticized because the kids themselves never made anything but he would show them these pieces and get them to open up about how they felt about them.” While sitting in on his classes she was learning the same valuable lesson as the students, that art can be defined and interpreted on an individual level because no two people are going to react the exact same way. “I realized it was ok to enjoy...