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LORI: So for the past
year and a half I have been painting and painting and painting my heart away. In
my studio I've been making 100 paintings for 100 people that I am grateful for. And I
decided to do this project because I want to live a life of gratitude. And I wanted it
to be big, I wanted it to challenge me spiritually to really commit to gratitude and I
wanted it to challenge me artistically. One of the paintings I made was for my
beautiful hairdresser Jasmine. When I go into that salon I look forward to it. I love
getting my hair done because I feel like she welcomes me at the door with just pure
love. And I just know I'm going to be loved and cared for when I go there. I feel
differently about myself since I've started to see her and I have this level of
acceptance of myself that I know has changed. Just from the loving genuine care she
gives me. I made a painting for uh Tony who is the auto mechanic where we live.
There is a very authentic feeling that you get from Tony that you just absolutely
know you can trust him. And I don't have any problem at all taking my car in there by
myself. It's a garage full of guys, they're great. I never feel like he's adding anything
on in fact I feel like he's looking out for us in trying to save us money. I feel like he's
completely keeping us safe. So one of the paintings I made was for Amy. I had
never met her but I knew of her story. Which affected me so deeply. Her story about
her daughter Rosie, when her baby uh when her baby passed and how she worked
herself through the grief. In her email she said to me she felt like she was the
luckiest woman in the world, that she got to hold her baby and be with her while she
was alive even though it was such a short period. On a personal level, I do I do have
experience with people passing because my father died when I was in high school.
And my family had a hard time handling it and I remember thinking there has to be
another way we could view this. And so there was something about Amy's story that
she is able to find a place of gratitude in all of that is one of the most beautiful
things I've ever heard. And it's changed for me the way I... just how we can accept our
lives. So I did 99 paintings and I had one more painting left and it was for my
husband. This project has been really lovely for my marriage we um specifically try to
notice what the other person is doing and thank them for that. Which I don't think
we were doing very much of that before. And I drew him and I sitting on a bench
with our two dogs and uh and we're overlooking green lakes and it says I love my life
with you. One of the things I didn't expect from the exhibition, was how
emotional people were going to be. It felt like it was heart to heart connected.
JASMINE: It was beautiful, I was captivated by the color when I came in. The color
and happiness that I instantly have a smile on my face. And I cannot believe that
room generates that kind of energy that I didn't want to leave. TONY: Most of the
times you feel pretty bad about giving someone the bad news on their vehicles so to
have something like this makes it you know things a little easier where you feel, jeez
you know I'm not here taking their money you know people do appreciate you
which is nice. It's going to look good on the office wall. AMY: It's such an honor to
have someone think about you that intensely put so much thought and love into
something. It has so much about me. I think that's a really unique gift to be able to
see someone. It's like she's seeing me seeing the inside of me. LORI: I have learned
that gratitude grows. It just grows and grows and grows. The more that I focused on
gratitude the more I was grateful for. I especially saw that with people. So I think
from this project I wasn't expecting to have sort of a different view of humanity in a
way but I actually do. I notice people now in a way that I didn't before. It seems like it
has opened up my world a little bigger than it was or maybe a lot bigger actually.
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