Today we’d like to introduce you to Danielle Crofts.
Hi Danielle, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today.
I grew up in a rural Utah farming community in the 1970s. It was an iconic time to experience childhood in my hometown of Payson, Utah. During this time, innocence and being carefree were at an all-time high for me.
Both of my Grandmothers were talented artists in their own right. They both nourished my inner artist by keeping me well-supplied with the largest tower of crayons that Crayola produced. I cherish the vivid memories of the delicious smells of oil paints wafting from their art studios. I remember almost reverently tiptoeing into my Nanas art studio when I was around four years old. I remember the big north-facing windows and my dad lifting me up to see countertops with various tubes of oil paint scattered all around next to mason jars filled with colorful washes that felt completely magical. That singular moment sparked a flame in me that never smoldered. In my eyes, Nana’s studio contained pure magic. I secretly hoped to someday have my own magical space.
There were a few things I knew I wanted for myself in this life. I wanted to be married. I wanted to have a home full of children. I wanted to be an artist and book writer. Those desires became cemented within me at a very young age.
As an adult, art became a great tool for me to process and express my life experiences of joy as well as grief. Any artist will tell you that what an artist creates is an unwritten journal of the inner heart for others to witness through brushstrokes on canvas. I am no different. The more I experience in life, the more my art helps me. The more heartache and joy I experienced, the stronger my need to paint became. In 2016, after having six children through traditional birth as well as successful adoption, my husband and I were approached to adopt a set of unborn twins from a mother who had terminal health conditions. That adoption process morphed into a very dark time for us all fraught with heartache and confusion. What was intended to be a positive expansion for our entire family, became an all-consuming living nightmare.
Hope eventually sprouted following a very lengthy FBI interstate adoption fraud case in which we had been victimized. This case resulted in a SWAT raid and the break up of an adoption scam ring in Florida. Because it was a particularly emotionally brutal case, the FBI eventually brought the case to full prosecution. To say that time was devastating is putting it mildly. After having a complete nursery with two empty cribs and filled with all the beautiful things that two babies might need, all that was hoped for had actually become the most painful reminder of a gaping wound in my heart. Those times became full of grief-filled sleeplessness. Sleepless nights of searching for understanding became my time to paint.
The painting eventually allowed me to let go of the heartache, heal, and regain my power back that had been brutally taken. During this time, painting was no longer a hobby, it possessed a strong purpose for me that I deeply needed.
That was in 2018.
We all know what happened in 2019-2020. Those two years were beyond devastating for all of us in many different ways. I remember an internal prompting during covid of 2020, that 2021 would be much worse for me. It was a weird inner foreboding — a knowing — but I lacked the capacity to fully understand what was coming. My personal refiner’s fire began in 2015. I had no idea of the unfolding rollercoaster of blind turns and plummets, not dissimilar to Magic Mountain that awaited me in 2021.
I consider myself to be a very spiritual person. I have always been by nature. Around 2015 I began experiencing seizures. I had never had a problem beforehand but over a short period of time, I could no longer drive or even take baths alone. After a year of experiencing seizures and anti-seizure medication, I experienced the opening of a new awareness as a result- the skill of mediumship. This was wholly uncharted territory for me. I had been blessed with heightened awareness. I had no ownership of such an ability prior to the years of seizures. It wasn’t until I conversed with a well-known best-selling author and world renowned medical medium that I learned her awareness had opened to her in a very similar way through also experiencing a period of seizures. My new awareness has greatly impacted how I live my life as well as helping others. Not to mention how handy it is when I have a teen that has sneaked out at 2:00 a.m. without permission. I can best describe it as having access to a supercharged navigation system with my own built-in Siri that can communicate the bigger picture of life when key information is needed.
I have learned how to listen really well when the spirit speaks to me. One of my hopes is not only to express possibilities through art but I’ve been writing a book to teach others how to connect to their own personal navigation Siri systems. So imagine the hair on the back of my neck standing on end in 2020 when spirit told me that post-covid would be more difficult than during covid. I could not compute it but I paid full attention.
It was on the first of February of 2020, during the very tail end of the typical covid protocol that had become our new normal. It was 10:30 at night. All my kids were tucked into bed and the house was settled in rest mode when spirit told me that I had a breast lump and I had better make haste in following through with a doctor appointment. I remember the word haste stuck out to me because I would never use that word myself. I immediately began to revisit what I had thought was scar tissue previously with heightened alarm. I reasoned that night that if I was supposed to die that I wouldn’t have been warned. I called my doctor the next morning.
At the end of February, I found myself sitting in the hospital alone (because of covid protocol) waiting for a mammogram. Ironically I remember observing a bald lady and thinking I was so glad that wasn’t me. Less than 30 minutes later the mammogram tech came into my room and said he was not going to mince words with me. He said he was 98% sure that I had cancer. It was a moment not dissimilar to ringing in the ears after shooting a loud gun or hearing a loud cannon going off. It was a deafening silence that rang loudly in my ears. In less than thirty minutes I went from observer to experience and my life would never be the same.
On March 22, 2020, I went into surgery for a non-nipple-sparing double mastectomy. I had originally been diagnosed with stage two breast cancer. When my doctor changed my diagnosis to a late stage three the news was even more devastating than the original diagnosis. When I learned that treatment would take at least a year, likely more, to POSSIBLY resolve the condition with both multiple rounds of chemotherapy and radiation I mentally told myself I would deal with it for one year, but not more. Unless you’ve been forced to walk through the cancer experience, you can not fathom the depth of how annihilating living with cancer becomes. It literally wiped my entire life out from under my feet, my husband’s feet, and that of my children.
I was too weak to do anything other than roll over in bed, let alone paint anything. My major event became walking from my bedroom to the living room couch and back. Even that was rare. My husband had to assume every single role there is in having a family of six children, one young toddler grandson whom we helped raise on a bi-weekly basis as well as owning & running a successful air conditioning company with many employees. Needless to say, my husband is not only my best friend and my biggest support but more after thirty years of marriage, the love of my life and my true hero.
I had an entire year to watch the only life I had ever known slowly crumble and fall away like an eroding embankment of wet sand. I also had an entire year to put into my mind and consciousness the life I wanted to live when the disease was complete. Every single day I lay in bed, sometimes in so much pain it hurt to have the bed sheet against my skin. During cancer, I refused all pain medication. My body was going through enough and I chose not to add pain management dependency to it. My visualization of who I would be and all I wanted for myself for healing and moving forward became what carried me through. I never once entertained the idea I was going to die. There were, however, days that I thought dying would be easier for me than living. I am human. I also had many humans surrounding me that I was unwilling to leave behind. I had future grandchildren to meet, children to watch go to school, prom dresses to shop for with daughters, High school football games to watch my son play his senior year, adult kids to watch blossom further into adulthood and eventually marry as well as a husband to grow old next to with. My healing mantra became that when I heal I would live every day with as much passion and excitement as a dream vacation. This focused idea carried me through cancer. Just like a vacation, I had planned every detail out in my mind. Every time fear came up I shifted my fear into my detailed plan.
To celebrate surviving cancer, in 2022 and for our thirtieth wedding anniversary my husband told me I could pick anywhere to celebrate. I wanted something epic and had grown up listening to ABBA. One simply can not listen to ABBA and be sorrow filled & at this time I knew my dad would be passing on soon so we settled on an ABBA concert in England. It was my last personal hurrah for the man I called Daddio. (My dad passed away on December 25th, 2022). I danced, laughed, and cried all while dad was with me in my heart and my best friend was by my side.
Through music, I revisited my joyful childhood with fondness that I swear could have wrapped around the entire world. My husband and I also experienced canal-filled Venice and shared a celebratory kiss at the top of the iconic Eiffel Tower. I’ll never forget while in Venice as I toured the city by gondola sitting next to my best friend atop the fluid turquoise water, a gondolier broke out an Italian song. It was one of the most beautiful moments in my entire life. I had survived everything life had thrown at me & I was now living the life I had literally dreamed of. My focus of every single day for an entire year had come full circle.
This is my happily ever after. I wake up every morning to drink a warm cappuccino and experience marriage to my best friend. My hair and eyelashes have grown back. I get to paint whatever my heart desires and watch my loved ones grow. I get to create all of it. We all do. It’s all about focus and attitude. It may sound really sappy or unrealistic to some but not after beating death. We are all meant to have joy. Sometimes it’s a sliver of joy, sometimes it’s a whole slice of joy but there is always sweetness somewhere if you choose to look for it. For me now, having the opportunity to experience life is the cherry on top. Sure life requires the mundane, and it’s not to say that there are no bad days- there are for all of us. Gladly though, I get to live this bonus round in vacation mode by my choosing.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Perception is everything. There are moments in life that can and will break all of us over and over again. I’ve learned that in the act of surrendering my will of what I think something should look like is when the shift into something better happens for me. Life is fluid and it’s designed to detach us over and over so that we can become a more expanded version of ourselves.
It’s the subtle accumulation of growth through these experiences over time that we become something far greater than we could have ever seen or imagined for ourselves. Letting go of the concept of being a victim of life and stepping into the attitude of “what can I learn” in times of hardship- that’s when the true magic happens. None of us can control exactly what we experience in life. What we can control is how we act and how we react. Life is consistently reframing our perspective because it’s meant to. That life narrative will not change. The secret is to enjoy every moment we find ourselves to the best of our ability.
Living in the past will cause sadness because we can never get it back. Focusing too much on the future causes anxiety. Focusing on the current moment is all we truly have in life. During the middle of chemotherapy fear was everywhere I looked. I missed who I was, yet who I was before cancer could never come back. I was forever changed. I had to let go of my past identity. Holding onto the identity I held before cancer was simply not an option. I had nothing left in my life that was familiar any longer. I had lost all personal comfort rituals of myself other than brushing my teeth. My very long red hair was gone. My fingernails didn’t look or feel like fingernails because of the treatments. My body was full of inflammation.
When I looked in the mirror I did not recognize the person looking back at me. I craved to have something normal that I could recognize. I remember thinking of the great idea that I could put on mascara to feel better about myself. I leaned over the bathroom sink to put mascara on and I was completely devastated to realize I had nothing to apply the mascara to. I did not have one measly eyelash. Oh, how I sobbed. In those scary moments, little questions would creep in like would I see my children grow? I remember asking my oncologist what the next step would be if the treatments didn’t work. He said one word that shook me to my core. He replied “Nothing” because there would be nothing else to do. I was shocked by that reality.
I went home and while looking out my bedroom window had a full on panic attack. In that very uncomfortable moment, my spirit reminded me that at that moment I had my breath. I was safe. I had everything I needed. From that point, I learned to live in the moment. That became my safety. Life will always have bumps in the road. Amidst the bumps look for the Vista at the moment. The more you look, the more beauty you’ll see. No matter what life allows me to learn from, I will always be the eternal optimist. That will never change.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
Painting is my priority second to breathing, family/God. I may have listed them out of order – I forget. In the past, I have worked with many various art mediums. My current focus is oil painting. My paintings are a collection of personal moments in time holding meaning that is close to my heart. My art is my interpreted life experiences conveyed in traditional as well as non-conventional perspectives of experiences that have moved me in some profound way.
My subject material is imagination, landscape, people, places, and ethereality. My hope is that my art ignites something within the viewer that can be relatable to the viewer’s own personal life. If I can invoke a stirring I have succeeded as an artist. I am a study- a work in progress. Undoubtedly tomorrow I will see differently than I do today or than I did yesterday.
My work is constantly evolving, changing, and expanding. Life, like art, is a living study. I hope to reflect on the constant positive evolution of growth within my art. Currently, I work mainly with commissions for private collections as well as businesses. I am always ready for a challenge to expand myself with advancement opportunities.
Alright, so to wrap up, is there anything else you’d like to share with us?
With this ability, I have to express myself in living, writing, and through creating art, I desire to hopefully prod awareness of the potential of beauty found through daily living as well as the beauty and value we each possess as individuals. I am constantly reminded of limitless beauty among chaos repeatedly echoed within nature when I look.
I grew up in a family that loved camping. I have great memories of roasting hotdogs after a day of hiking and eating smores by the glowing campfire under a sky of endless stars. My ticket to adventure was tripping in the old 1969 avocado green family station wagon. A great time was always guaranteed when our Coleman tent lay in the very back seat next to the loaded cooler and sleeping bags. Those items undoubtedly meant fun. Dusty off-road adventures offered a plethora of beautiful Utah scenery from aspens in the mountains to plateaus of pastel-hued sandstone. The mark of a successful adventure meant that by the time we reached home, my socks had accumulated nearly as much dust as the roads we had explored.
Nature in its raw form always presented me with something to ponder over. The beauty in the timeless landscape was much bigger and much grander than I could ever fully take in. I was continually shown glimpses of nature’s mystery either by a flock of birds that simultaneously moved in sequence mid-flight in the distance or how the surface of the water danced in the sunlight down a riverbed. My mom would pretend that fairies and gnomes lived in the roots of old knobby trees in the campgrounds. She would teach us to tiptoe around the tree roots in hopes of ever having the possibility of catching a glimpse of one. The presented possibilities in nature seemed endless. If nature has ever taught me anything it’s that it is continually unfolding and revealing something further to notice & observe.
Nature continually unfolds a mystery that can transform entirely within a few seconds simply with light. Nature is the wise silent teacher that has no need for words yet the lessons apply to my own life constantly. Who am I to say something or someone must look or be a certain way to be accepted? Interpretation of a singular moment in nature serves as a humble reminder to me that I will always be a student of learning. If we are not learning we are not growing. The world is purposefully full of color.
Nature beckons me to understand that I should be willing to observe the creations within it in more than a fixed black-and-white perspective. It’s the masterful creation of light that pours across the sky right before dusk that creates a sunset in an amazing symphony of color that will never repeat in the exact same way and circumstances. In that, I am continually reminded of the value of simply being. The glow of a warm flame that illuminates a face in a beautiful way serves as a reminder to really look at the individual & see the beauty we each innately hold exactly as we are. It’s all of the beauty in everyday life that I get to observe, enjoy and attempt to interpret created from an unseen force far wiser than I could ever comprehend. Being an artist is all about learning how to see light and shapes in a way that nature chooses to reveal herself to be seen.
Nature gives a quick flash of ‘Hey look at me!’ silently screaming with her pop of amazing color in hopes of being noticed. It’s not unlike all of us that also want to be noticed and appreciated for our own individual uniqueness. The skill of observation allows me to translate patterns and shapes in a different & hopefully pleasing way. Opportunities for moments of connection get missed with pressing matters by all of us. Life is fast-paced and we are missing too many opportunities to genuinely connect. Painting forces me to slow down and see what I may miss otherwise. The painting also affords others to stop in that captured moment of wonder. Art is about connecting with the individual. I think that’s one of the biggest reasons I love it. Someone has the potential to connect with me a hundred years from now and still be touched. That’s an amazing gift.
I had the opportunity to visit The Louvre Museum last October while in Paris. If you have ever been to The Louvre, you will relate that it can be quite overwhelming. I studied five pieces of masterful work that day that moved me more deeply than I could have ever imagined. My favorite viewed work was by Guérin, Pierre Narcisse France entitled Le Detour De Marcus Sextus, 1799. It’s a neoclassical piece depicting time lost. The subject is Marcus Sextus returning home after their banishment by the Roman Dictator, Sulla. He returns home from exile to find his wife on her deathbed. The expression depicted by the artist still moves me to tears. Captured perfectly is the horror of realizing his time with his wife is forever lost and he can not get it back. The pursuit of the chase of life cost him his most precious gift- time.
As I studied other famous and deeply moving works of art, I realized the most important lessons from those very early time periods of civilization have not changed. The struggle is still balancing for connection with precious loved ones. Time is the most valuable possession we each have and lastly, acceptance and care for the marginalized over social conformity or rule should be paramount. To me, the most beautiful thing about painting is that I will never be done learning how to see. Painting continually teaches how to see beauty in everything and everyone. For that reminder, I am grateful to never stop looking.
If I ever forget to search for even the smallest amount of beauty & value in something such as a tree, a flower, a distant mountain range, a loved one, or a stranger’s face in passing I have forgotten what living is about for me. Experiencing life is precious and fleeting. Our footprints fall on this earth for a very short time. My personal life pursuit will always be a quest of me chasing my own thoughts to express my witness of this life experience either felt by word or by paintbrush.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @Daniellecroftsfineart and @Daniellecroftsfinearts
- Facebook: Daniellecroftsfineart
Image Credits
B. Couture Photography and Maria Wilson
