Photo Session + Interview with Lady Krispie

I recently did some new photo work with Molly of Lady Krispie to highlight her new desserts and packaging. I had a blast styling and photographing (and sampling!) her new treats. She recently moved to Maine, so I thought I’d include a little Q&A with her about her business and the big move. Hope you enjoy!

You can find Lady Krispie at www.ladykrispie.com and on instagram @ladykrispie.

Becca Grady: Can you tell me a bit about the inspiration for starting Lady Krispie? 

Lady Krispie: I grew up eating all the sugary cereals after school at friends’ houses and snacking on Rice Krispie treats out of the vending machines at school. As I got older, the same cravings were still there, but my palette had matured and it needed something a little more. I started making treats using cereals and candy toppings that my older self could enjoy. Using crunchy corn flakes, melted rich dark chocolate, smooth peanut butter and salted pretzels. I tested different combinations and every time I did, I brought them along to birthday celebrations, dinner parties, friends’ gatherings, book clubs, brunches, work meetings. I started taking requests from friends, asking “what is your favorite cereal and what is your favorite candy?” I dreamed of opening a cereal treat bar where you could walk in and build your own cereal treat starting with a cereal base, unlimited candy toppings, a drizzle of melted chocolate and sprinkles on top. However, I wasn’t quite there yet because it was just a side passion of mine, so I did the next best thing. I started a word of mouth and eventually online shop where you can make your own custom cereal treat, cereal layer cake and cereal pie. This led to more custom treats like party and snack mixes, chocolate bark and cereal sandwiches. So… while I really started making Lady Krispie treats to fulfill my early twenty something sweet tooth, my inspiration to start Lady Krispie as a side business came from every friend, family member, co-worker who said to me “Oh my gosh this is so good, have you tried making one with this cereal or that topping” or “Grady, this is insanely good!” I really took every comment as my motivation to try more and more and ultimately my reward has been in connecting with people over a shared love of sweets. 

BG: What is your favorite LK combination? And your most popular?

LK: My favorite Lady Krispie combination is the BFF Lady Krispie treat because it combines the ultimate best friend combo of peanut butter and chocolate! One of the most popular is the Birthday Party which is corn puff cereal dipped in melted white chocolate with rainbow sprinkles. It’s great for any celebratory gathering!

BG: I am obsessed with your new party mix. Can you talk about all the new additions, the mixes and barks etc.? Any plans for party mixes in different flavors or will you just have one kind?  

LK: The party mixes start with the same base of Chex cereal, pretzels, popcorn, mini marshmallows, melted white chocolate and sprinkles. The best part is that you choose your add in of one cereal and one candy. My favorite add ins are cinnamon toast crunch cereal and chocolate covered pretzel. They are offered in large party mix sizes and small snack size pouches to easily ship or take your snacks on the road! 

I also just introduced chocolate bark over the 2020 holiday season.  I love the combination because it is a crunchy crispy chocolatey sweet snack. I will be introducing more to the shop soon.

BG: Anything new in the works for LK?

LK: Yes, always. I am creating new flavors for upcoming seasons and holidays. I am working on new product, packaging and expanding the business in Maine and in New York.

BG: You recently moved to Portland. What's it like being back in Maine? What are your favorite things to do in Portland?

LK: Portland is amazing. I have enjoyed checking out local businesses here and looking forward to exploring more once businesses fully reopen. The access to the outdoors is a huge draw to Maine. I love running along the water in Portland most mornings and in warmer weather I do beach visits, hikes and camping.

BG: You brought the business along with you. How was it moving the biz as well? Are you doing anything differently in Maine?

LK: The move to Maine is great. Having the luxury of space and easy transportation makes the Lady Krispie production and delivery process so much more efficient. It is so exciting to be discovering a new market here in Portland and Maine. The best part of bringing Lady Krispie to Maine is that I can now pack treats along for every beach trip, hiking trip or road trip!

All photos by me, Becca Grady

Studio Visit: Painting on the Coast of Maine with Elizabeth Kelley Erickson

Elizabeth Kelley Erickson is a painter based in Maine. We’ve been friends for over twenty years. It’s been ages since we’ve done a studio visit, so on my last two visits home to Maine, in September and again in January, we made the time to sit down in her studio and chat about the work she’s been making lately. We talked about her inspiration, her recent move to California and back home to Maine, as well as her upcoming show at Frank Brockman Gallery in Brunswick, Maine that opens on Saturday, March 7th.

Becca Grady: Can you start off by talking a little bit about your work and what you do? 

Elizabeth Kelley Erickson: Through painting, drawing, art + yoga, and archeology, I’m exploring nature, relationships, culture, and consciousness. I’m following three seemingly separate internal calls: painting, art that comes up out of yoga and meditation, and archeological art. All three areas have come on really strong in my life and I’m searching for the intersection, to see how they might take form in a way that makes sense. All of them are connected to place and to making work that comes out of an experience. All the work is about nature: nature as in the natural and human worlds, and the spiritual nature of things. Meanwhile, archeology has me delving into both my imagination and science about this magic little archipelago of islands in Cape Porpoise, Maine. I have always felt that it is my soul’s home. There is such a draw for me to experience this place. It is constantly changing. It’s a real living relationship I have with this land. I just want to be out there: exploring every tidepool, knoll, nook, the mudflats, and all the geological flows and features. There is a lot of evidence of humans in the junque that is washed up, and with how our human activities affect intertidal life. I want to know all the stories, including the histories and layers of human occupation, while also acknowledging the sense of impermanence with regards to the future and climate change.

BG: You've been painting and drawing for a long time now. Can you talk a bit about how you got started? 

EKE: Well, I must have let enough of my desire to work as an artist be seen and there were a few key people in my life who caught that. They mirrored it back to me, offering encouragement and support. My friend Jeannie, who just passed away, had me start with scribble drawings. This entailed putting on some music, waving the pastel in the air (charcoal, brush, anything) as if you were conducting the music, and letting it flow onto the page. It took a combination of internal drive and external support to break through fear and actually get things moving. I took classes, went to figure drawing groups, and started painting out in the landscape. I began running with a group of artists and we would plan painting trips and call it “Art Camp”. There was a lot of talent in that group and they were all so generous, I learned from everyone. We showed work together and a lot of us are still dear friends. That crew and my teachers and early encouragers effectively performed an act of midwifery that brought my work into the world. It is so important to encourage one another. I take the opportunity to encourage other artists whenever I can. 

BG: So, you were my introduction to figure drawing. I still remember all those nights going to the figure drawing group with you way back when. Is the group still around and do you still go? How do figures show up in your work today? Has that changed, evolved over the years? 

EKE: Oh, wow Becca, I remember meeting you as a teenager. You had an uncanny wisdom and were already an independent thinking artist. Yes! The groups are still happening, I go when it fits with my overall workflow. It is always helpful to work the drawing chops and I love re-connecting with my home-team of artists. A couple years ago I was inspired by my interest in working with shapes to take a workshop with Ken Kewley. He is a master teacher and has a great way of working small compositions with hand-painted paper. After that workshop I started working directly from the figure with collage. It is a great way to explore the integration of figure in space as well as to work with observational abstraction which has been a long term pull for me. 

There are other long held figure ideas gestating but it remains a mystery as to when they will take form, but they have to do with letting the charcoal fly on a large scale and relate to the collages in terms of straight-line construction. Figures come up through the art & yoga too. These are coming from memory, sense impressions, the subconscious. Usually they are gestural or little figural blobs and flying or dancing or doing things in the landscape.

BG: You lived in California for a while, and then came back to Maine. Did living in California shift any perspectives in your work? Immediately I think about the difference in light between the two coasts. Is that something that you notice or think about? Has your work changed being back in Maine?

EKE: Yes, I definitely tapped into the brights out west, it is really funny to look through all my older “gray” paintings of New England landscapes compared to what came out after I started painting vegetation and botanical forms out in California. I also got really into yoga. I literally went out to buy fluorescent paint because it seemed like the vibration of the plants was so high. It was so LA, I’d have a morning green drink, go to a phenomenal yoga class, and get to work painting next to a massive cut leaf philodendron. I found out that philodendron translates to ‘Love-Tree’ so that became the name of that series.

I moved to California right after finishing my MFA in painting. Being out of school and in a totally new place there was a freedom to explore and reconnect with what and how I wanted to paint. I ended up squelching my expression during the MFA experience so I could do what I needed to do for the program. Once I got to California, I experimented more. The internal and external light and energy affected me, my paintings got bigger, more expressive, and the color came back. That energy and language is part of me, and it is coming out in the work I’m making now that I’m back in Maine. The thing about California was that the influences out there tapped into a part of me that had been dormant: the light, the joy, the energy, the friends I made, teaching art, teaching Kundalini Yoga, the huge creativity. It was so fun. I do miss LA, my friends, all the art, artists, yogis and definitely although I also love wintertime in Maine, the weather. I’m glad to be back in Maine though, to get grounded, to settle into my studio, and let the work integrate. 

BG: You've been working on a series of paintings of rocks. Can you tell me about them, and how you're thinking about them now? I'm especially interested in hearing about these three large, colorful ones that you've just finished. I love these paintings - they are so strong and vibrant, not quite of the ocean but absolutely of the ocean. It's almost like what you would see if you were at the water's edge on a really sunny day and you stared at the sun for too long and then closed your eyes, and in your mind’s eye you saw the same scene but abstracted into vibrant colors. These began as smaller studies that you painted on the island in Stage Harbor, and then made them larger, correct? Does anything change or shift with them once they become larger? How do you approach the color in these? 

EKE: Thanks Becca! I love your afterimage impression. I’m so glad you got the sense of sitting next to the ocean. This is really what they are about, that experience of sitting amongst the seaweed covered rocks. The intertidal zone is totally my muse right now. There is so much life and magic and metaphor in this place between the low and high tide marks. I’m working something out on a deep level here. It feels like the key reason I had to come back to Maine. This flow of paintings started back in the summer of 2017, with the small paintings done out on the islands. I had been working out there with big shape breakdown, with observational abstraction. The application was brushy and gestural. Then my painting buddy Janet Ledoux and I took a field trip to the Museum of Fine Arts. I saw a little Arthur Dove painting of the night sky. I was struck by the simplified and contained shapes and the mystery of Dove. The next day when I went out to the island, I was painting on the far side of the island and I had the most amazing sensation: my body was tingling and I truly felt this one-ness, an order, a rightness of everything with everything. I was painting away feeling grateful and amazed at it all. I was capturing shapes of the light on the seaweed, the rocks, the surface of the water, and small breaking waves. They were all coming out more contained like the Dove painting, but it was less representational. My alarm started going off and I could hear the faint chimes, but I just kept painting. I was half-sitting on a rock with my leg extended in a tidal gully, and I could feel the tide rising up my leg! I had to get back, so I did not get caught in the tide, but I just kept painting. Then a little mink popped up on a rock about 5 feet away, went behind a rock and dropped into a pool nearby and disappeared. What a gift, I was given this non-dual experience, totally one, totally happy. I packed up really quick and felt like I danced across the rocks to get back. I had to go through the mud, wading home while holding my kit and the painting up out of the water. I did a couple more paintings over the next few days like that, and then the following week, I headed back to LA and started working on the larger versions of these paintings in the studio. It was as much about savoring the raw beauty of those days in the intertidal as it was about building images in the studio. I kept the colors pretty consistent, they are bright, but it was important to get the deep color sensation of being amongst the seaweed rocks. Shortly after that, we moved back to Maine. After getting my studio space set up, I brought the paintings back out of storage. I just finished and delivered them to Frank Brockman Gallery in Brunswick, Maine for a show. These paintings are part of a larger series called Rocks and Sea that I’m still working on, out on the islands and in the studio. 

BG: You also have a series of more meditative paintings, the circle drawings. How do you make these? They look so good altogether, seeing the differences in patterns. 

EKE: Thanks for that, they are really experience paintings. It is phenomenal where art can take you, what it can show you about yourself if you let it. That series comes directly out of my yoga and meditation practice. I have the materials set up and move right into making after a yoga set and meditation without breaking the energy. So, the art comes right out of the meditative current. There are a lot of surprises with what comes out onto the page, it can get pretty personal. I’ve been using this method to connect more intuitively with nature too, working outside and feeling for the pulse of the setting I’m in, whether it be the garden or the intertidal zone. It’s a way to listen to the earth, which is so important to our collective vision. It feels like magic when the imagery of the ancients flows out of the brush, and how what I’m learning through archeology rises up. I have to thank my teacher and mentor Hari Kirin for guiding me to a new level of depth with my art & yoga practice. She is a fantastic painter, yogi, teacher, healer who wrote the book “Art & Yoga”.

BG: When you describe what you do you mention Art + Yoga almost as a different category – is it? Do you think of it as separate from the rest of your art making, or as a practice that informs the rest of your work?

EKE: Great question, it started as separate. I saw it as a way to clear the noise and tune myself in creatively, to explore the unknown. A place that was not to be seen by anyone else. My work from observation started to show up, like memories of subjects I had recently painted on location would meander onto the page in a gesture or shape. I started using meditations for visual perception and intuition with the intention of listening to and looking for what the land, the natural world wanted to communicate. Using art as attention to witness. The same spirit of curiosity, looking and listening runs through the archeology. Imagery inspired by archeological digs and the ideas we are gathering about how life was for the ancients started to flow after meditating. So, I am finding all the strands weaving together, informing each other.

BG: You mentioned that you've been working with an archeological project in Cape Porpoise and that you're learning technical drawing as part of this. Can you tell me a bit more about that? How is the technical drawing different? How does one learn how to do that? I imagine it comes easy to you after years of drawing, but the drawings look so perfect. 

EKE: Yes! This is another phenomenal thing that happened. The natural magic of life amazes me. The islands that I paint on are part of the Kennebunkport Conservation Trust. The trust land borders my family property. All my life being in this place I’ve wondered about who lived here before, what was the cultural and geological history. So, I was out there painting last summer and ran into the lead archeologist and was invited to volunteer 3 days later at the excavation of 700-year-old dugout canoe from the mudflats in front of my family cottage. Crazy, right? We had been walking over this thing for generations! Everything clicked and I have been working with CPAA (Cape Porpoise Archeological Alliance) ever since. Having accurate technical drawings in addition to photos is an important part of the archeological record. The team showed me basic drawing conventions and I worked up a scale drawing using rulers and grids. It’s a lot of looking and measuring, once you get a basic schematic you get into a rhythm. The thing is, this canoe is very complex. It is deteriorated, cracked into pieces full of worm holes. So CPAA set up a workshop with Sue Osgood, an expert epigraphic recorder who has been documenting the temple and tombs of Egypt, to work with us to innovate a method for drawing the canoe. This project is in the works. The team has pointed me to conventions for drawing stone tools and artifacts which I’m working with now. I love the discipline of it and am grateful for the in-depth study of these artifacts and what they can tell us about who was here before us. 

BG: What is a typical day in the studio for you? Do you have any routines? Do you have favorite tools or music that you listen to? 

EKE: Celery juice, morning practice, yoga, meditation, writing. It is key for me to take care of myself and have a service component to my day, to tend to home, to relationships, and to get out in nature. A friend of mine said “The rocks you are painting love to have you witness them”, I feel this as an energy exchange. So, I’m always intent on clearing things that block my spiritual sense and developing my ability to witness. I listen to a lot of mantra, beats, rhythms, and even medieval music like Hildegard of Bingen. I have a playlist for my Rocks & Sea series, the other day I could not get enough of whale sounds. Some of my music reaches into the ancientness of the rocks and the fluidity of the water. Sound carries a healing vibration, so I’m immersing myself in a vibrational soundtrack of the intertidal. My secret hope is that there is a healing going on with the “gazing”, the attentional and imaginative immersion in the intertidal. It feels like a love affair. When I give myself over to it, I feel the reciprocity and sense of wonder. As for a routine, my perfect workday is art and yoga in the early morning, studio painting after that, a great walk in the afternoon with some archeological drawing, and study before dinner. When I’m working outside, I plan around the weather, the light and the tide cycle. If the light is right at high tide, I take a kayak, if it’s low tide I’ll need my big old boots. I am out there a few days a week, sometimes walking, sketching or taking photos and then going back to the studio to paint. 

BG: Are there other creatives, painters, writers, thinkers, that you look to for inspiration? 

EKE: I have always loved painters like Joan Mitchell, Richard Diebenkorn, Willem de Kooning, Manuel Neri, Elizabeth Cummings, and Cecily Brown, for their gesture, muscle, and surface. I look at many of the Perceptual Painters of the Hawthorne lineage for their value and shape flow, paint application, and soul. I also love drawing. I’m thinking of Jenny Saville’s big drawing of 2 reclining figures that I saw recently at the Broad, and some of Ginny Grayson’s head studies, and of Jacopo Pontormo’s work. Hilma af Klint really got me and I like looking at strange medieval painting, Outsider Art, and dreamy work like Kyle Staver. I’m inspired by Mark Bradford’s epic work and I follow a lot of contemporary painters like Terry Ekasala, Galen Cheney, Jennifer Pochinsky, and Daniel Crews Chubb. 

BG: Do you have any shows coming up? Where can folks find your work? 

EKE: The best place to see what’s happening is on Instagram: @elizabethkelleyerickson and my yoga art feed @heartseyeart. Right now I have a solo show of yoga art at Positive Works Studio in Amesbury, Massachusetts (by appointment only, email me at capeporpoiseme@hotmail.com), I have 3 small collages in the Nano: A Tiny Art Exhibition at Engine in Biddeford, Maine through March 22, 2020, and I’m excited that the beginning of my Rocks & Sea series is up at Frank Brockman Gallery in Brunswick, Maine opening March 7, 2020. 

Thanks so much Elizabeth! If you’re interested in seeing what the intertidal zone in Cape Porpoise looks like, you can see it at sunrise in September here, and find more Studio Visit posts.

All photography by me, Becca Grady.

Why I love Maine in the winter

Growing up in Maine, summers at the beach, in all their sandy, salty glory are embedded in my memory. I can still taste the salt on my upper lip after a day in the ocean. Less appealing but equally memorable was the moment at home, taking my swimsuit off in the shower and finding seaweed that had been kicked up from a storm and had traveled home with me, piling up on the bottom of the tub, mixed in with any leftover sand. We also took seaweed home on purpose, to my childish embarrassment. At the end of every beach day, my mom would fill up the trunk of the car, or a box in our VW camper van with seaweed to take home to the garden. Winter was equally glorious. Snow days were spent sledding at the dump (now a recycling center), ice skating on Roger’s Pond, and somewhere in Alfred, I can’t quite remember was a barn that we would skate in. Mom would make homemade snow cones, snow and maple syrup. She even made the maple syrup, hammering taps into our handful of maple trees and hanging buckets up to catch the sap. The sap would simmer on the stovetop for hours, until it reached its golden sugary perfect consistency. Or not, occasionally they would simmer too long and become a blackened mess that took days to clean out of the pan.

Winter was the time after the tourists went home. Each year of my childhood they seemed to stay longer, all summer, then the leaf peepers in Fall, then the Halloween tour buses that would arrive to go to the haunted houses on Summer Street, then Christmas Prelude in the port. But come January, everyone went home. The beaches were quiet, and most shops and restaurants closed up till March. As I grew older, and got my driver’s license, winters became even better. I would borrow my parents’ car, get a gas station cappuccino, turn up the stereo extra loud (Mazzy Star - rest in peace David Roback, DJ Shadow, Portishead, Tricky, all on tape) and drive around the beaches, empty, cold, and beautiful.

I live across the country now, in a quite a different landscape, in New Mexico. We get snow and cold wind too, but we have mountains instead of waves. I went home in January this year and was reminded of just how much I love Maine in the winter, January in particular. The flights were cheap and half full, with the holiday rush over. There were snowstorms of course, but thankfully it only slowed down the driving, and not my flights. I stay with my mom when I go home, in her tiny cabin in the woods. We drove around the beach, went for walks, made lots of coffee and good food. The beaches were empty, just how I like them. With a few folks off in the distance, leaving their footprints behind, but also leaving us space to be alone with the wind and the ocean. The beach is extra special after a storm, the sky still cloudy and grey, but beginning to calm, and slowly to let the sun back in.

Mom, just after the snow stopped, on the pier in Cape Porpoise.

All photographs by me, Becca Grady.

A Morning on Campobello Island

From the town of Lubec, Maine you can see across the border to Canada. At West Quoddy Head Light, you can see the back of Grand Manan Island. In town, in Lubec, you can see the shores and lighthouse on Campobello Island. There is a bridge to Campobello Island, with a small border crossing station set up on either side. We had a little bit of extra time before driving to New Brunswick and then onto Nova Scotia, and decided to visit. It was my first time visiting Canada twice in one day!

Not really knowing where we were going, we decided to just drive across the island. We reached the other side and found a lighthouse - the Head Harbor Light Station. It’s only accessible at low tide. We arrived well past low tide, and the staircases on either side led down into the water. The tides here are quite strong and dramatic, as you can see in some of the photographs below. If I ever make it back to Lubec and Campobello, I’d love to take a boat out in the harbor. It was so beautiful!

We drove back across the island to the second lighthouse, Mulholland Lighthouse. This one is visible from the town of Lubec, and you can see Lubec across the water in the background. We were hoping to catch sight of a whale, as some folks we met in town told us they were often seen, but sadly they didn’t visit us that day. We did get a few seal visitors though, before heading back across the bridge as we set off for New Brunswick, and our second visit to Canada.

At the Edge of the US in Lubec Maine

My mom took a road trip by herself a few years ago, driving all the way up the coast of Maine. She stayed in Lubec for a few days, driving over the bridge onto Campobello Island and into Canada. Lubec is the northeastern most point of the US, and its lighthouse is iconic. She told us all about the trip, and I’ve been dreaming about going ever since. In May, when Soni and I were planning a trip to Maine and Nova Scotia to visit both of our families, we decided to fly to Portland, stay with my family for a week, then take the ferry from Bar Harbor, Maine to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. This was another dream of mine, to take the ferry again to Nova Scotia. When I was a kid, we took a family vacation to Nova Scotia and rode the ferry. I loved it! I especially remember my dad sneaking me into the casino where I used a slot machine for the first and only time in my life.

All Summer long we got updates from the ferry, they were building a new terminal, and everything was delay, delay, delay. Then they refunded our tickets without letting us know that they’d canceled. The thought of another multiple connection flight to get to Halifax from Portland was exhausting. We mapped the route and decided to rent a car for one way. This way, we could stop in New Brunswick on the way to visit Sonia’s grandmother. I told my mom of our updated plan, and she said no way, don’t rent a car, I’ll drive you. Can you get Soni’s parents to meet you in New Brunswick?

The drive from Kennebunk, Maine to Moncton, New Brunswick is an all-day trip. My mom has been dealing with lyme disease and it’s kind of an exhausting trip for her, so I suggested that we make it into a road trip, doing two shorter days of driving, and stopping in Lubec. I booked us rooms at the Eastland Motel, and we were set. This way, I get at least one of my Maine dreams on this trip!

September is a funny time in Maine. Fall is beginning, but there are a few wisps of Summer left. The first day I was in Maine, I got a warm day, warm enough for a beach day. The rest of the nights were cool, and the trees were beginning to change colors. October is prime leaf season in Maine, but in September there are tiny pops of red along the roads and here and there in the forest. The drive to Lubec was beautiful. We got there in the early afternoon and caught some beautiful light at West Quoddy Head Lighthouse. From the lighthouse and the beach, you can see Grand Manan Island in Canada. On the beach, our phones all switched over to Canadian service, unclear of where the US/Canada border is. Grand Manan Island looked like one long cliff, a giant island with nothing on it. Sonia told us that her mom lived there for a while when she was younger. In the parking lot, we found a map of the islands, and it appeared that the other side of the island was more accessible by boat, and that was where the majority of the inhabitants lived. After visiting the lighthouse, we went out to dinner in downtown Lubec, at the Lubec Brewing Company, a cute farm-to-table restaurant on Water St. (the main street in town).

I’ll always love Summer in Maine, when you can stay in the water for hours. But growing up in a tourist town in Maine, there’s something so magical about the off season, when most of the tourists go home and the beaches empty out. Even when I am the tourist, I love the quieter time of year. I don’t mind the weather, it’s just lovely to be there.

On Writing and Painting, a Photo Session + Interview with Emma Grady in Cape Porpoise, Maine

Emma Grady is a writer and painter based in Brooklyn, NY. As Emma’s older sister, it’s safe to say that I’ve known her for a long time. I have always been immensely proud of her. We traveled home to Maine together in September, and took advantage of our time together to do a portrait session and a little Q&A which you can find below. I recently helped Emma redo her websites, so we wanted to get some fresh portraits to use. You can find her writing at emmagrady.com and her painting at emmagradystudio.com. Her writing has recently been featured on Man Repeller and Glamour.com.

Becca Grady: You do a lot of things, how do you describe them, what’s your elevator pitch?

Emma Grady: I’m a freelance writer for magazines focused on personal essays about (what I hope are deeply relatable topics), from romance to fashion. I’m also a copywriter for brands and a painter. 

BG: You've been writing and painting for a long time now. Can you talk a bit about how you got started? Have you always done both? 

EG: Yes, I studied literature, art history and painting in college. I’ve always been interested in fashion and when I graduated, I merged that with writing and became a fashion writer fresh out of school. I moved to New York City and was mainly focusing on getting my writing career off the ground and recently picked up painting again about 4 years ago.

BG: When did you first start painting? 

EG: I studied various mediums throughout school and loved drawing portraits. I was later drawn to abstract painting because I never quite knew how a piece would come out. I never paint with a particular goal in mind, I’m very much inspired by colors and the brush strokes and how it all interacts on the canvas. That’s what keeps me hooked, that element of surprise. 

BG: How has your style evolved over the years? 

EG: I’ve always been drawn to a classic style which is why I love vintage fashion so much. In my twenties, I almost never bought any new clothes and primarily shopped secondhand and vintage. Now that I’ve reflected a bit on my style, I see that I sometimes bought things because they were a great deal and not my style, so I tend to think more about bringing anything into my wardrobe. I’m still drawn to timeless pieces, but my day-to-day wardrobe is comprised of new investment pieces rather than vintage items. 

BG: How did you get started writing? I know that your writing practice has changed a lot, from writing about ethical fashion to more personal essays. Can you talk about that shift?

EG: My start in writing is based in ethical fashion and that will always be a part of me. After publishing more than 1,000 articles about fashion designers and their latest collections, I wanted to write about something personal and more specific to my experience. For example, I wanted to write about being a freelance writer from a small town in Maine and moving to a big city and all the ups and downs of that. I wanted to write what I like to read, which is personal essays that make you feel connected to those around you. 

BG: What are you working on right now? 

EG: I’m working on new pitches for magazines as well as a personal essay that I’m going to pitch to Modern Love. Pitching for me is spontaneous and I never know when I’ll get a story idea as I’m very much inspired by my daily life. I do, however, set aside time to think about how I can frame certain stories as well as read what stories magazines are publishing. 

BG: I'm always interested in how creatives who work in different media balance their practice. Does writing and painting feel like separate practices to you, or do they overlap? Where do you find your inspiration? How do you think about them? 

EG: I view painting and writing as very separate though my process is similar. When I paint, I turn off my brain a bit. I don’t think about what I’m doing, it just happens. Similarly, to writing, when I have an idea, the story writes itself. That is creative inspiration to me, there is no struggle, it feels easy. 

BG: What is a typical day in the studio for you? Do you have any writing or painting routines? Do you have a favorite tool or music that you have to listen to? 

EG: I listen to the same music when I write as I do when I paint, which is electronic house music. There’s something about listening to my favorite DJs — like Lane 8, Amtrac, Rüfüs du Sol — which makes me feel energized and excited. It’s the same music I listen to when I run as well. I like to zone out any outside noise so I can focus. As any writer knows, being interrupted and losing your train of thought when you’re in the middle of a story is not so much fun. 

BG: Do you have any favorite writers or artists that you look to for inspiration?

EG: I’m one of those writers who is always afraid of being influenced by other writers but it’s unavoidable. I love The Cut’s Ask Polly column, that’s one thing I like forward to reading always.

BG: You live in New York - there are so many good museums there. I think my favorite museum trip we ever did together was when we went to the Met Cloisters. I'd never heard of it until you told me about it, and it's in such a beautiful museum in an amazing spot on the north side of the city. Do you have places in the city that you like to return to like that? 

EG: The Met still remains my favorite museum. It’s actually fun to go alone, to daydream and go at your own pace. I went to Florence and Paris last year and wandered around the museums there. I’m particularly drawn to landscapes and portraits. I always wonder about the people in them, which appeals to my background in art history. 

Emma’s painting, inspired by the colors of New Mexico, hanging in my home in Santa Fe.

Two of Emma’s smaller paintings, on display in my home in Santa Fe.

Thanks Emma! To see the rest of Emma’s paintings head to emmagradystudio.com, and find her writing at emmagrady.com .

Sunrise and Moonrise in Cape Porpoise Maine

In September, I went home to Maine for a week. Sonia and my sister Emma joined me, and we rented a small cottage in Cape Porpoise. It was on the harbor, and after so long in the desert, it was amazing to smell and hear the ocean so close.

The first night in the house, it was warm enough to keep the windows open at night, and I was surprised to be woken up way before sunrise by the sound of diesel engines starting up and chugging out of the harbor. Cape Porpoise is an active harbor, and you’ll often see fishing and lobster boats heading in and out past the pier.

Growing up, my dad often moored his small wooden sailboat in Stage Harbor, and we would often sleep there, jumping in the water during the day and playing cards at night with the musty old deck that lived on board. I still remember the smell of the kerosene lamps. At low tide, we could walk out to the islands.

There was a spectacular moon one night, and the next morning I got up early (though not as early as some of the local fisherfolk) to catch the sunrise. I will never tire of sunrises on the coast.