We were lucky to catch up with Krista Goebel recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Krista, thanks for joining us today. Do you feel you or your work has ever been misunderstood or mischaracterized? If so, tell us the story and how/why it happened and if there are any interesting learnings or insights you took from the experience?
I’ve forgotten a lot about my high school years, but one memory I have was from freshman year theology class. The whole class sat in a circle, and we were each told to go around the circle and name one accomplishment we’d like to work towards in our lifetime. For most of my life, questions like this made me anxious. I had so many different dreams about fun jobs and an array of exciting hobbies to try–but nothing felt serious enough to mention in front of my class in the presence of God, who surely watched theology classes more closely than other classes, right?
My mind was completely blank when it was my turn to speak, but I heard my voice call out at the same time as everyone else heard me say, “I want to write a self-help book.” Where did that come from? Something deep inside me answered the question that my mind hadn’t wrapped around yet–I like to think I was speaking straight from my soul. I was feeling a mix of excitement and confusion about this truth that just blurted from deep inside of me when I heard another girl in the circle say, “I HATE self-help books, ew.” And just like that, WHAM! I had a new wall up (or “Big Stuck” I like to call it) because I was so embarrassed. I gave up not just on my self-help book but on my story writing in general.
This pattern kept occurring with many of my ambitions. I would finally start to settle on a dream–artist, veterinarian, scuba diver, harpist, farmer–but then I’d have specific moments, sometimes multiple moments, when these dreams would get shot down by other people who, for some reason or another, thought my dreams were unrealistic, or I was unfit. I stumbled through my life following the pathway that always seemed like the one and only path that didn’t get shot down by others. I started college completely undecided on my major and ended up getting a very “liberal arts” degree, and one thing led to another and I pursued college admissions and counseling for about four years after graduating.
Those four years were very busy for me–I had so many responsibilities and long hours. I like to think about those years as my time for subconscious processing. In helping students map out their own goals, hobbies, and college lists, I also processed my own pathway in a way that I hadn’t done when I was actually living through it. I call it subconscious processing because I didn’t have the time to consciously spend time in my own thoughts–I was in a “go go go” work and life culture. At the end of those four years, I faced what I call my Big Burnout. I quit my job and road-tripped with my dog Red from Oregon back to Pennsylvania, where I was born and raised. I finally took time to unravel this pent up knot that was my life. And unravel it I did!
In the past two years, I’ve fallen back in love with my childhood passions for art and writing, and through it all, I’ve held onto my ultimate passion that has knitted my dreams together consistently–my desire to help others feel connected to one another. Life is so much richer when we don’t feel that we’re navigating some huge, complex knot called life with infinite possibilities all alone, but rather with people with whom we share mutual love, trust, and shared experiences. I’ve thought back a lot to that moment in theology class when the girl whose name I can’t remember changed the course of my life–and I realize now that her shooting down my dream was just a simple miscommunication. She could have had a similar dream that got shot down without her even realizing it, or maybe she was parroting an opinion from a parent who tried reading a self-help book before they were ready for it. Who knows!
I believe that just about any interpersonal or social issues or conflicts on a micro or macro level stem from some sort of misunderstanding. People who, deep down, have similar end goals misunderstand each other all the time. Sometimes they use seemingly opposing means to get to an end–and people get so wrapped up in the means that they can’t work together, despite having a shared mission. Another miscommunication simply occurs when people discuss their dreams at the wrong time, such as when I announced my writing dreams at the wrong time for one headstrong listener. I have no way of tracking down this girl who made me suppress my desire to write for so long, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all if she decided to write a self-help book herself. It wouldn’t surprise me if that moment was a formative moment in her self-discovery journey as well.
I am a firm advocate for thinking critically about our early memories–we remember certain things for a reason, and they can be clues about what we really want to be doing with our time and where our “Big Stucks” are. Unraveling my own Big Stucks around art and writing (music too—the list could go on and on!) over the past couple years is the reason that I’m pursuing my creative lifestyle today. I’m so grateful for this interview as the perfect platform for being able to combine my passions for art and writing to inspire deeper connection between the wonderful community of entrepreneurial-minded creatives.
Krista, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
On March 4th, 2020, I moved to Portland, OR, across the country from almost everyone I knew, to start a new job in college admissions the very next day. Everything was off to a decent start until, 8 days in or so, the whole country suddenly went on lockdown. Not only did I not see those coworkers again for quite sometime, but I was also across the country from everyone else I knew as I navigated the start to the Covid-19 pandemic.
I remember during one of the early days of lockdown, I had a phone call with my mom, who was worried about me, during which she mentioned listening to someone on the radio talk about how a lot of people were using this unexpected isolated period to take up new or old crafts and hobbies. She suggested that I pick up my art again, which is something I hadn’t done much of since high school.
I took out my Prismacolor Premier colored pencils, the very same ones I bought in the third grade, and drew four colorful flowers in the summer of 2020. I bought a printer and opened a tiny Etsy shop to sell flower greeting cards. I didn’t have much time to devote to my shop, but I still loved it. My idea behind my shop was simple–I just wanted to create an easy way for myself and others to send colorful art and kind words to their loved ones during an isolating time in all of our lives.
In October of 2021, I faced what I call Big Burnout. I had disagreements with how Covid-related issues were being dealt with by my company, and the issues ate away at me. I felt pretty strapped financially to my job–I felt like I couldn’t quit, or… what? I finally realized that the alternative meant moving in with family for a bit, who I missed so much and wanted to visit anyway! Shortly after this realization, I handed in my two week’s notice and drove across the country back to Pennsylvania with my dog, without a career plan in place.
After I made it to PA, I started drawing a Christmas card cover, an illustration of my dog, Red, popping his head out of an evergreen tree. After I completed it and posted a photo online, my friend asked to commission me to draw her dog Ellie, and then that commissioned portrait led to another and then to another… I’ve never looked back!
My mission for Colors of a Flower is for my art to foster all sorts of connection: connection to self, connection to a lost pet, connection with others, connection with nature, etc. My main medium is colored pencils (I use Faber-Castell Polychromos, Prismacolor Premier, and Caran d’Ache Luminance pencils all about equally). Within the last 6 months or so, I’ve started getting more and more into watercolor (I use mostly Winsor & Newton professional watercolors and Beam Paints). Recently, I’ve taken a small step back from doing commissioned portraits and have been working more and more on my own original ideas, developing my own style in watercolor and colored pencil. Up until recently, my artwork has been realism-focused; I have been working my way up to creating photorealistic colored pencil drawings. Right now, however, I believe that my own style and artist voice is blossoming into something new.
I’m enamored by the idea that perception (which I’ll define as the experience we have with seeing, smelling, tasting, touching, and hearing) is so highly subjective. I believe that, through language, we’re able to converse about how each of us perceives the world differently, but art can help us see how others see the world more directly. For example, have you ever tried to imagine a new color that you’ve never seen before? There are certainly more colors out there–mantis shrimp, for example, have 16 color-receptive cones (as opposed to our three) and can see ten times more colors than we can! It’s difficult to imagine what we haven’t seen yet, but I’m trying! And I’m trying to capture my attempts in my latest and upcoming artwork.
My latest work challenges the way that we see color and wonders what color looks like from different lenses. I believe that, the more people realize that literally every single person on this earth perceives the world differently, we’ll finally all realize that we have a lot more in common than we ever dreamed. My art fosters that sort of connection.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
I believe my body signals to me when something is important, and I believe yours does too. For instance, have you ever gotten tunnel vision while working on a project, and time flies by unnoticed until you’re finished and then you get immediately sick? Have you ever felt butterflies in your stomach speaking with someone, or sweaty palms leading up to your turn with the karaoke microphone? Call it what you will–fight or flight reflex, flow state, adrenaline, goddess within–I believe we all can access our body’s natural energy if we’re open to listening to our body’s signals.
Recently, I found what I think of as “My Cabin.” When I saw the Zillow listing, I was immediately drawn in and felt that it was my home. It was within budget for me to put in an offer, it was exactly the log style I’d always imagined owning, and it even had the perfect fireplace, loft area for guests, and screened in porch that I’d always dreamed of. When I visited the cabin in person, I was only more sure that the cabin was meant to be mine. My mind couldn’t help but race to the future–me, living in My Cabin with my dog Red, creating art from my screened-in porch, selling the art online, and taking orders to the cute little post office in town. What was so interesting was that, the night before I saw My Cabin in person, I could feel my heart beating in my chest stronger than usual. I had my aunt, a nurse, come over and check my heartrate–and the rate was a little bit high but still in the normal range. All throughout driving to the cabin, viewing the cabin, and doing some hiking in the area, my heart felt like it was beating more strongly than usual. It felt like it was saying, “Enjoy some extra oxygen and notice everything!”
Only when I was driving back home did my heart start beating normally again. I put in a really strong offer the next day, and a week or so later, I found out that the seller went with someone else’s offer. I felt so many conflicting emotions–of course the seller had every right to go with another offer–it was her cabin to do with as she pleased. But in my head and heart and soul, it was also My Cabin. It kind of felt like I had written an entire novel, start to finish, only for a minor character to speak up and say, “Ahem, this book is actually about me,” and I had no choice but to listen and start the book over.
I was down on myself the whole next week, until I got a call from my real estate agent that the other offer didn’t go through, and I was next up! For almost 24 hours, I reveled in my imaginations of the future again, thinking, Of course the other offer didn’t end up going through. This is meant to be My Cabin. Then, my agent sent me the inspection report. Apparently, the previous owner had never stepped foot in the cabin for almost 40 years, and although on the surface the cabin looked almost new, it had so many breaks in its bones from lack of love and care that the safest thing to do would have been to demolish it and build something anew, which I didn’t have the heart nor the budget to do.
Interestingly enough, I wasn’t crushed this second time. I think I shed a few tears when I turned down the cabin, but I felt good overall because I was turning it down on my terms. Going back to my novel-writing analogy, this was like getting to the point in the rewrite where I could confidently say, Yeah, this is the better story; I’m glad I restructured it. I started looking up the rules and regulations for buying a plot of land and building on it.
What I learned from this experience is that, just because my body signals to me that something feels right–and my body has signaled to me all throughout my life in different ways with different levels of intensity–it doesn’t mean that the “right thing” has to happen now. I believe my body brought me to My Cabin so that I would have a crystal clear view of what my ultimate lifestyle goals looked like, but my time for tiny cabin dwelling hadn’t come yet. My body was helping me see at least this one goal clearly in a confusing world of limitless possibilities. And now, I’m confident that “Another Cabin” will be part of my future story.
Throughout this experience, I unlearned my mind’s role in planning out my destiny. I realized that there’s no need to plan my whole creative life out in my head. What I ask of myself now is to be present to my surroundings and my own feelings, and to lean in when something feels right. For my art business, this means that I don’t have to “be my own best boss” all the time in the sense that I don’t need to have all of the answers at once. For example, I don’t need to know exactly who my target audience is and how to cater exactly to them already. What I need is to be my own best employee, going above and beyond to learn how to do new things and busy “doing.” For any company, I believe there needs to be those “entry-level” positions whose job is to do a lot of “doing”–intake, paperwork, phone-a-thons–it’s all very important work that doesn’t require a whole lot of vision. Since I’m working for myself all alone, it makes sense that, for a majority of the time, I have to be a “doer,” making those lower-level things happen, rather than a visionary–and that’s okay!
I believe that, ultimately, we want our hearts, minds, and souls all to be aligned when we make decisions, and most of the time, it’s easiest for that alignment to take place when we don’t take our racing minds too seriously. Instead, we should lean into our feelings. A quote comes to mind, “Man plans, and God laughs.” I’d like to change it slightly: “People plan, and God/divine energy/destiny/whatever-the-heck-you-want-to-call-it laughs, and our goal should be to laugh along too.” I believe laughter is an excellent, impulsive sign for us that we’re tapped into our own energy. Once we start to be in-tune with our own bodies, we start taking our thoughts a little bit less seriously, and instead, we lean into our feelings. I believe that leaning into our feelings helps every aspect of our lives and is how we can start to grow successful businesses. On the flip side, if we don’t listen to our bodies and pay too much mind to our thoughts, our bodies might stop signaling to us, we get exhausted, and our businesses can’t thrive. I believe leaning into our feelings adds laughter to our life. I believe leaning into our feelings is grace.
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
I see little dots over my entire visual field, even when my eyes are shut. I always see the dots as lighter than my surroundings, like little stars. They’re always individual (never clumped together), always moving, and they’ve been consistently present ever since I can remember. This experience/disease/phenomenon/however-you-choose-to-categorize-it is called Visual Snow, and it’s really only been medically written about within the past several years.
You might be wondering how this visual impairment has impacted my art–it’s a great and interesting question! For as long as I can remember, I’ve tried to make my art depict, as accurately as possible, my reality/what I see. Some of the pieces I’ve created over the past year or so I’d characterize as photorealistic, or perhaps hyperrealistic for a piece or two. However, I don’t draw or paint little dots over everything–I don’t think anyone would guess at how I view the world based on my art.
How is it that my eyes see so differently from others’, and yet my realistic drawings look similar to others’ realistic drawings who don’t see Visual Snow? The reason is because it’s really easy for me to pay no mind to my Visual Snow, kind of like how my uncle, who is colorblind, forgets a lot of the time that others see the world in more color than he does. I’m able to draw realistically in a way that someone without Visual Snow is able to because the snow is always in motion–I can make out what’s behind it like I’m able to make out an object while looking through a light rainfall.
In one of my early childhood memories, I asked my sister what all of the little dots we could see were called (I assumed that she saw them too). She had no idea what I was talking about! You know when a ray of sunlight hits some dust particles in the air just right and you can see what must’ve been there all along? When I found out my sister couldn’t see what I saw, I thought I just had “super-eyesight” that allowed me always to see dust. I subconsciously assumed I had “supervision” all the way up through college, when a classmate mentioned his Visual Snow in a class discussion, and my mind was blown. One other girl and I gasped when he described what he categorized as a visual phenomenon. All three of us in that room had the experience of asking about the little dots as a child, being told we were making it up, and never mentioning it again until young adulthood.
For me, that moment of connection, of realizing, Hey, just because I see things differently from most people, that doesn’t make me crazy. Better yet, there are other people out there who see the world as I do, or at least understand my experience–that moment was priceless. I want to create that moment in my artwork for viewers. How can I show how different visual impairments impact people’s eyesight and visual experience? Or applied differently–how can my art depict a world that someone with a physical barrier warping their vision sees, such as how a truck driver views the world through a windshield most of the time?
When more people understand that how we see this world is so personally subjective, and everyone’s perception is valid, then I believe that we’ll move toward living in a more peaceful world. I believe that everyone’s beliefs, morals, and reality is built upon a very subjective perception of life. I want my artwork to foster connection for those with similar lenses they view the world through, while inspiring other viewers to take the time to try to understand the world of a person with a very different perspective. My experience with Visual Snow is a very straightforward example of how something we’re born with can warp what we see, but I think that people’s views on politics, religion, war, peace–anything, can be traced back to very personal, subjective root causes, and once a person feels truly understood, perhaps then they can start to compromise with others on their understanding.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.colorsofaflower.com
- Instagram: @colorsofaflower
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100085755337032
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/colors-of-a-flower
- Other: I just started a new TikTok account that could use some love: @colorsofaflower.art