Missoula’s Starry Night

My love for Van Gogh started as a teenager. It was his story that pulled me in first, and his work that never let me go. There’s something about the way he saw the world, the emotion he packed into every swirling brushstroke, that has stayed with me my entire life as an artist.

In 2025 I was talking about his work with someone and the idea just hit me. What would his sky look like over the Missoula valley? The place I've grown to love, my home for the past 8 years, painted through the lens of the artist who has inspired me longer than any other.

I painted Mount Sentinel, the Clark Fork, the city lights nestled in the valley, all of it wrapped in that unmistakable swirling luminous sky that only Van Gogh could have dreamed up.

This one is deeply personal. It’s my home and my hero on the same canvas. This piece came from a very personal place. A teenage girl who fell in love with Van Gogh’s story and never got over it. Painting his sky over my valley was a dream I didn’t know I had until the idea arrived. My hope is that  when others look at it they feel both the magic of Missoula and a little bit of that same wonder Van Gogh put into everything he ever made.