Artist creates inspirational deck of cards

“When the pandemic first started, of course, we were staying at home and I was really bored,” she said. “I found some online classes and I did some of those so that kind of got me comfortable with actually trying to paint.”

It didn’t take long before Graves noticed a theme emerging in her works. Though she didn’t know much about painting, she said she would get an image in her mind and would do her best to replicate it. She found that she most often leaned toward painting women, normally in nature or dancing in the moonlight. Goddesses.

“I started realizing that I was leaning towards all these goddess paintings,” she said. “I would, in my dreams or just in my thoughts, get an image of a particular woman and then I would just try to sketch it out. Some of them are on canvas and some are on paper, but I would just sketch it out and then paint it.”

Graves said the prevalence of the moon in her drawings likely came because she was painting a picture every full moon, and she would theme the picture around which full moon it was. For example, she said for the harvest moon, which appears in September, she did a picture with corn growing.

Another nice thing about painting goddesses in the moonlight was that she could do silhouettes, as she didn’t know how to paint realistic faces. She prefers focusing on the background and showing either the back of a woman or their silhouette.

Graves didn’t originally set out intending to paint only women or goddesses, but she said it just felt right.

“Being a woman, I just felt that there was a lot of strength in portraying women in such a positive light,” she said. “I wanted to do that.”

Graves ended up showing one of her friends her paintings, and her friend immediately told her she should create a deck of inspirational cards using her goddesses.

“She prompted me to do that,” Graves said. “So we got them printed up and the response has just been wonderful. My whole reason for doing it was just to get them into the hands of people that could benefit from them. On the back of each card, there are words that go with it. Inspirational words. So most people that have the decks, they use them like tarot cards. You just draw a card and then that gives you the inspiration you need at that time.”

Originally, Graves said she struggled with figuring out what to write on the cards.

“I kept putting it off because I just couldn’t figure out what to say,” she said. “And so I just sat down and prayed that I could find the right words, and they just came to me. I could barely write them down fast enough. I would just hold up an image and I just knew the exact words to put with each one.”

Not long after Graves created the cards, she found how helpful they could be for people. The woman who had helped her come up with the idea for the cards had given a deck to her brother, who was hosting some Ukrainian refugees in his home. According to Graves, one of the refugees was on a Zoom call with one of her relatives in Ukraine, using the cards, and the relative asked that the refugee draw a card for her too.

“So she did, and it was one that’s called grief, and it’s all about how to deal with any grief that you’re feeling,” Graves said. “And the woman said it was exactly what she needed to hear at that time. I love that story. I love the idea that someone clear over in the Ukraine was benefited by the cards.”

Because Graves saw how the cards could help inspire people, she decided to donate one deck for each one she sells. So far, she has donated to two different cancer support groups.

As of now, Graves only sells her cards personally, but she plans on trying to expand and sell them commercially. She will host a launch for the cards, as well as an artist talk about the process of creating them, at Moon Mountain Highway. Even after the cards are being sold on a larger scale, she still intends to donate a deck for each one sold, she said, especially having seen how much they can help.

“There’s a lady that uses them who does therapy with people, and she uses (the cards) in her therapy sessions,” Graves said. “She said people are always amazed that the card they draw is the one that they exactly needed to hear, which is kind of exciting.”

The card launch and artist talk will take place from 3-4:30 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 8 at the gallery in the back of Moon Mountain Highway, located at 113 W. Steuben St. in Bingen and open from 11 a.m. through 5 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday.