Starting again, on purpose

I'm Monica Lozano Lievano. I'm Colombian living in Mexico, and for the past nine years I worked as a tech implementation consultant — full corporate, all in. But I always painted. Whenever I had free time I'd take a course in painting or illustration, sketch in the margins of my week, promise myself I'd start something real "soon."

For years I didn't. I was scared of the competition. Scared I wasn't good enough. And I had a family to help support, so the risk never felt like mine to take.

What changed

I became a mom of two boys. Between the house, the kids, and the job, my husband looked at me one day and said it plainly: I was doing too much. Four months ago we made a decision together — I would stop working, he would carry us financially, and we would be careful with expenses while I gave this a real try.

I started painting again. And something is different this time. The pressure of having to make money from it is gone, and in its place there's courage I didn't have before. Of course I want to contribute — that matters to me — so I built a schedule I can actually keep: two hours of drawing and painting a day, Monday through Friday. Some days life is chaotic and it doesn't happen. Most days it does.

The honest part

I don't have a style of my own yet. I love painting portraits, fruit, flowers and nature. I've worked with watercolor, gouache, oils and colored pencils, but acrylic is the medium I keep coming back to — it's the one I genuinely love.

So this site isn't the polished portfolio of an artist who has it all figured out. It's the start of an art business, in real time, by someone who finally decided to stop waiting.

Why I'm sharing this publicly

Accountability. I've tried to begin this journey since my first son was born and I kept failing in private. Doing it out loud — collections, pieces, mistakes, progress — is part of how I make sure this time is different.

If you want to follow along as I find my style, build a body of work, and figure out what kind of artist I'm going to be, I'd love to have you here.