An adventure in art

Kim Kreis likes adventure. 

In fact, she often takes it one step greater — she likes to try new things sight unseen.

That goes for the small — she learned how to smock dresses by way of a friend giving her instructions over the phone. But that also goes for the big — she started up a stationery business with that same friend, Barbara Barker, without ever seeing anything Barker designed.

“I’d never seen her draw, and she’d never seen me draw,” Kreis said. “But we were good friends, we both loved stationery, and both wanted to start a business.”

So they got a business license, and Sweet Pea Designs was born.

That was 28 years ago.

“It’s been well blessed,” she said.

Now with one daughter married, one daughter engaged, a son home from military deployment and two grandchildren, Kreis decided it was time to add a new adventure. So this year she got another business license and started Kim Kreis Art — a painting business — before she ever bought the first canvas.

“I bought my paint and bought my easels and decided if I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it all the way — everything you do, do it to the best of your ability,” she said.

And with that, she dove right into a world of abstract florals.

“I thought, ‘I’m going to have to conduct this the same way I did with the other business,’” Kreis said. “The important thing was to step out and do it and ask God to give me favor if He wanted me to go forward, and He would either bless it or shut it down.”

She approached a few shops in the area to see if they would display her paintings, and right out of the gate, she got some “no” answers.

“Sometimes they didn’t carry art, or they didn’t like abstract paintings,” she said.

But Kreis wasn’t discouraged — she just took that as God redirecting her, and she said she could see his purpose unfolding when she held her first art show in June at the Loft above Simply Infused in Mt Laurel.

“I had a lot of sweet friends come by, and some bought pieces, and that was lovely,” Kreis said.

But she also had a group of college kids she didn’t recognize who just wandered around for a while, she said.

After a while, she asked them if she could help them, and they said they were shopping for their mom, taking photos and sending them to her so she could pick out what she wanted.

“Later they came up and told me they were ready,” Kreis said.

And her jaw dropped when she saw how much they got.

“I asked them what they were doing here, what had brought them to Mt Laurel,” she said.

Turns out — it was her.

Their mother, Heather Devaney of the Chattanooga area, had seen Kreis’ artwork advertised and sent them to check it out. 

“Her love of flowers and color touch my heart,” Devaney said. “I need color, and she has a way of combining florals and abstracts that strike emotions. Her paintings have passion, and it stems from her passion of Jesus, and they make my heart sing.”

Since buying the pieces, Devaney has hosted a show for Kreis at her house and connected her with friends who are also art lovers.

Kreis said connections like her friendship with Devaney have been a gift from God — affirmation she’s headed in the right direction.

She had a similar bit of encouragement happen one day in the checkout line at the grocery store, she said.

She’d been contacted by one magazine, but she’d been praying for God to help her meet the editor of a particular other magazine.

“I was in the grocery store in front of the magazines, and I apologized to the lady behind me for taking too long to pick one out,” Kreis said. “She said it was no problem, but she joked that I should probably get a particular one, because she was the editor.”

It was the editor she’d been praying to meet.

“I just started laughing,” she said. “We exchanged information, and she’s featuring my florals in their spring issue.”

Kreis said she takes that as encouragement in her new season — something she passes along to the new mothers she mentors at the Church at Brook Hills on Brook Highland Parkway.

“We are going to go through a lot of opportunities to rewire our lives,” she said. “It’s important to look forward to each stage as a new adventure.”

For more information, go to kimkreisart.net or follow her on Instagram at kimkreisart.