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My Story.
There once was a girl who spoke in colour
with thoughts like wind on a stormy night
tamed only through the act of creating
fables and myths and legends alike
When the sun would set and her eyes would close
she would create inside her mind
scenes of forests and dragons and magic
and of adventures that she would find
And with those dreams there came a need
to shape the worlds she'd seen
"one day," she whispered to herself
"I'll spend my life creating."
Prologue
Since the beginning of mankind, we have told stories. These stories were never just mere entertainment, though. They were rituals, warnings, lessons, and attempts to make sense of the world. Though their function has changed over the centuries, their purpose has remained the same. We need to create. It is an innate part of who we are. Myths, legends, and folklore have carried our fears and our dreams across generations. They remind us that fantasy is as essential as truth.
We need these stories now more than ever.
Chapter 1
The Girl Who Could Fly
I have lived a charmed life.
My story begins in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, 1993. I was a happy, imaginative child who spent countless hours in the garden, playing make-believe in a little shed my parents had transformed into a playhouse. They always encouraged my brother and me to become whatever we dreamed of being. He wanted to be a musician. I wanted to be an artist.
Mine was a childhood steeped in imagination. Every night, my mother sang lullabies about the moon floating like a big balloon in the starry sky, while my father would bring a fairy named Princess Starlight to life with nothing more than his hand. When the lights went out, my bed became a little boat adrift on an endless sea. And when I finally fell asleep, I could fly.
They were teaching me to wonder. To dream. Before I had even picked up a paintbrush, I was learning how to imagine.
Chapter 2
Lessons From The Ancients
By the time I left high school, art, theatre, and history had shaped me more than I realized. I knew I would never be content spending my days behind a desk. I had chosen a different path. I wanted to spend my life within stories.
Rhodes University was where my fascination with the ancient world truly began. In my second year, I chose Classics as an elective simply because it interested me. There, I was introduced to the myths, legends, and folklore of ancient civilizations. At the time, I saw it as a subject to satisfy my curiosity. I never imagined it would become one of the foundations of my future as an artist.
Chapter 3
The Crack
Looking back, I wish I had discovered it sooner. Had I known then what I know now, I might have studied Classics as a degree. Instead, I graduated with a degree in Drama and Psychology—two subjects that, in their own way, taught me how stories shape the way we think, feel, and understand the world.
Teaching seemed like the natural next chapter. Both of my parents are teachers, and I admire them deeply. I followed in their footsteps, completing a postgraduate diploma in education before spending the next few years teaching high school Drama.
In Plato's Symposium, the playwright Aristophanes tells the story of how humans once had eight limbs and two faces. They were very powerful and they used that power to fight the gods. Zeus wanted to punish them and so he split humans in half. Ever since, Aristophanes says, we have wandered the earth searching for our missing half. Our soulmates.
In 2017, I found mine.
I followed him to a small rural town where he could pursue his dream job as a mechanical engineer. We moved into a little cottage beneath an enormous tree on a farm, adopted two tuxedo cats named Artemis and Apollo, two Huskador dogs named Zeus and Athena, and quietly began building a life together. I found a new school to teach at, and we settled into our own little corner of the world.
I loved my students. I loved storytelling. But somewhere along the way, I realized something was missing.
I wasn’t creating anymore. Something that had once been an intrinsic part of my life had been replaced by lesson plans, grading tests, and teaching the same plays year after year. I loved teaching, but I missed making something that was entirely my own. I was beginning to lose my passion.
I felt like a fraud. How could I inspire a love of theatre in my students when I no longer felt that spark myself? It didn't feel fair to them.
A crack had formed.
Chapter 4
A Hobbit Door
Then, in 2020, the world turned upside down, and I suddenly found myself with more time than I knew what to do with. Naturally, I filled it by creating. I experimented with clay, embroidery, and eventually, paint.
I hadn't picked up a paintbrush since high school, yet it felt as though no time had passed at all. It felt natural. It felt right. Painting became something I looked forward to each day. It quietened my mind, gave me space to think, and, most importantly, gave me back something I hadn't realized I had lost.
I was creating again.
Ironically, the first painting I ever completed was of a hobbit house. When I posted it on my personal social media, someone from Sweden reached out asking to buy it. It hadn't occurred to me that people might actually want to own my work. For the first time, I allowed myself to imagine a different future.
And so I started The Flora Collection. I started painting more, but ventured towards subjects I thought other South Africans would want to buy. I enjoyed painting watercolour flora and fauna - but I fell into the trap that catches so many artists. I was painting what I thought other people would want to buy. Not what I wanted to create.
It was all part of the process, though, of discovering who I was as an artist. I attended markets and exhibitions, met wonderful people, and my work sold well but I was missing something far more important.
A story.
Chapter 5
The Wrong Question
Last year, my husband and I found ourselves talking about the same dilemma I'd wrestled with for years. He knew how I loved fantasy, folklore, and mythology, and he suggested I paint another hobbit house—this time as a large oil painting. I had only recently begun experimenting with oils, and it seemed like the perfect subject.
I said no.
No one would want to buy something like that, I insisted. It would be a waste of time. I was painting South African subjects and people loved it.
But his words stayed with me. Eventually, I gave in and began my first large fantasy painting.
True to form, he was right.
The response was unlike anything I had experienced before. Thousands of people shared it, and within twenty-four hours it had found a home in Canada. For the first time, I realized I had been asking the wrong question all along. Instead of wondering what people wanted to buy, I should have been asking what I wanted to create.
So here I am, a year later.
I left teaching. I began studying folklore and history.
I used my savings to buy a little shed, transformed it into an art studio, and committed myself to painting the stories I wanted to tell.
Every morning, with a cup of coffee in my hand, I slide open the studio door and step through a portal into a world where I am free to create.
I have never been happier.
It has been a wild journey filled with moments of exhilaration, just as many moments of panic, countless lessons, and more than a little uncertainty. But for the first time in a very long time, I know I am exactly where I am meant to be.
Looking back, I realize I have been following stories my entire life. As a child, they taught me to wonder. At university, they taught me about the past. In the classroom, they taught me how to tell them. And now, they have led me here.
Epilogue
The end.
The Flora Collection has evolved over the years, and it will continue to do so.
Every chapter of my life has left its mark on my work. Each painting has brought me one step closer to understanding the kind of artist I want to be.
The next chapter belongs to Torhuil.
Torhuil is not just a fantasy world. It is a world born from the myths, legends, and folklore that have captivated humanity for thousands of years. It is a world where the myths we thought we had forgotten were true all along. It is a place where dragons still soar, forgotten gods are remembered, ancient forests whisper old stories, and every painting is a window into a larger tale waiting to be told. Each piece I create will become part of its history, accompanied by its own story, poem, or fragment of lore. The more I paint, the more Torhuil will reveal itself to me.
My hope is that one day, The Flora Collection will become more than an art business. I dream of building an online gallery and makers' shop dedicated entirely to fantasy, a place where artists, storytellers, and dreamers can gather, explore, and celebrate the worlds that exist only because someone first imagined them.
After all, that is how every legend begins.
With a story.