Hi, my name is Magdalene Lima-Fiallos.
I was born in McAllen Texas. I currently live in Central Florida with my husband, Gene and our two Brittany Spaniels. We recently moved to Florida from the Pacific Northwest (PNW) in 2021 after living there 6 years and enjoying the hiking and exploring nature in that magnificent place near the Columbia River Gorge. My husband and I have been married for 23 years and we have moved a lot of places with his job as a mechanical engineer and project manager! I have lived in Texas, Oklahoma, Florida, Georgia and Washington State! My full-time job is serving as a Pediatric Speech-Language Pathologist doing a hybrid teletherapy and travel position for a Middle School in Yakima, Washington.
The start of my artistic journey.
Combining bright, bold and joyful colors through paint and collage is my passion! I have always loved art and creativity! I grew up observing my parents engage in all kinds of creative activities. My parents also instilled in me a very strong faith and love for ministry. My mother was a church musician and loved cooking, entertaining and sewing. My father was a minister and church planter but also was very creative. He was a do it yourself expert. He was a skilled carpenter and auto mechanic, rebuilding classic cars, adding rooms on to our house, building and refinishing furniture and polishing rocks. As a child, I dabbled in every art and craft activity I could get my hands on! I loved paint by number kits, jewelry making, painting rocks, sewing, embroidery, needlepoint and painting ceramics. I was very busy in High School in band as a flutist and the drum major leading the band. I almost majored in music in college but finished graduate school at Baylor University in Waco, Texas as a Speech Language Pathologist (SLP) . I had finished high school, tragically lost my father during my freshman year at college, then worked two jobs to help pay for college, married right out of college and started working. I did not reconnect with my art until my late twenties after a divorce. I took courses in watercolor painting and enrolled in some art classes at my local community college. I fell in love with art all over again! I met and married my husband Gene who appreciates art and music and has always supported my creative pursuits.
The birth of Gifts of Creation and the Metamorphosis.
In 2001, I started my Art Business, Gifts of Creation on the side. I began drawing children’s portraits in pencil and colored pencil by commission. I was very busy doing this for a few years in my spare time while continuing with my full-time job as an SLP. I then began painting in acrylics. I really became inspired by two artists then - Karrie Evenson and Wyanne and I began learning from them on Youtube and took their online courses. I took workshops and classes whenever I got the chance in person and online. I started selling my paintings and commissions for portraits on ETSY in 2008. I took an online course by WYANNE called ART Play and another course in developing your own style by her that really got me started on my journey in Acrylics. I have continued with my ETSY shop since then with regular sales. In 2016 I took some oil painting classes by Dreama and Nancy Medina and really enjoyed learning more about color, value and composition. I loved painting in oil but continued developing these new skills with acrylic painting. I started painting rocks and combining this with hand lettering. I sold a lot of commission rocks on ETSY with my colorful floral designs and custom hand lettering. At that time I also started painting a lot of pet portraits, landscapes and abstracts and was taking commissions for these. I got super busy with commissions for pet portraits and rocks from Etsy, Facebook and in person. I was doing this on evenings and weekends since I continued working all the while as an SLP. I began complaining to my husband about all of the pressure and stress the deadlines for these art commissions were causing in my life. My art soon became a chore and I temporarily lost the joy and passion for creativity I once had. If I ever did find a free moment to create art from my heart, I felt blocked and unable to flow creatively.
My dream…
Around 2020, when the pandemic hit, I was steeped in this frustrating and stuck place on my artistic journey. It was then I discovered a life-changing online mentorship course by a professional artist, Kellie Day, called Transform Your Art. I enrolled in this course and Kellie became my Art Mentor. She really helped me to find the creative vision and true voice for my art that had become buried. She helped me to redefine the life goals for my art journey and get back on the path to my true creative calling. I realized that my dream was to paint authentically from my soul and create art that would touch and uplift people’s hearts. I slowly gained the courage to say no to all these commissions and begin to paint in my own style and voice. It has been extremely liberating and I am beginning to see possibilities for Art as a true second career. My dream is to one day cut back on my full-time job as an SLP and begin practicing Art as a profession at least part-time. I realized that fear and insecurity had held me back for too long and I that through my art, I have a beautiful and uplifting gift that needs to be shared with the world. The timing for this shift in my art practice could not have been more appropriate. In 2020, my mother was sick and dying in a nursing home and was unable to have visitors. This season of life was full of sadness as I had to witness her suffering and being alone from so far away and being able to actually paint authentically from my heart became a daily therapeutic and healing practice. I began to express all of the pain and beauty I was experiencing in my paintings. My art began selling like never before and I could see that my experiences and emotions were shaping my art and speaking to people on a personal level.
Magdalene and her mother, Lucy Hyman 2017
In April 2021, I happened to walk into Juxtaposition in downtown Camas and met Suzanne. We struck up a conversation and before you know it she had invited me to be the featured artist for a pop up show on third Thursday in downtown Camas! I was so blown away by her generosity in giving me this opportunity To have my first solo art pop up show as well as my first show in my hometown of Camas! The show was held on July 15 and it was so successful! I felt I had experienced a shift in my Art Journey by how well my art was received at the show. It was a huge confidence booster! I also met Laura Tullio that night who then invited me to be featured in a story on her blog. Wow it’s so amazing how one walking through an open door leads to another and then another and then another!
Magdalene and Suzanne Ferguson at Juxtaposition in Camas