studio U

studio U amy elliott ubelhor | artist | happy, hand painted art, jam-packed with vivid color | IG: studiouart

it was my son’s fifth grade classroom party. a room loud with excitement and anticipation of the holiday ahead. treats h...
08/13/2026

it was my son’s fifth grade classroom party. a room loud with excitement and anticipation of the holiday ahead. treats had been passed out and paper plates were piled high and buckling under the sugar!! everyone’s that is, except one child. severe, life-threatening food allergies meant almost nothing in that room was safe for that kid to eat except for the one healthy snack a mom had brought in. so his desk held a single cutie. that was it. mind you, he didn’t complain. he was having fun with all the kids and was used to it.

my son, an empath of the sweetest kind, saw it before i did. he moved through his room of classmates without ceremony, asking, gathering, until a small mountain of clementines and a few toys sat where an empty desk had been. no speech. no audience. just a kid deciding no one should sit alone with less.

hadn’t thought about that in years until it came to mind this morning as i painted. ordinary fruit, extraordinary boy.

some things you paint because they’re beautiful. some things you paint because you’re still, years later, quietly in awe. 😊

twenty-five years ago, i had the privilege of being a house guest of richard and victoria mackenzie-childs, the owners a...
08/11/2026

twenty-five years ago, i had the privilege of being a house guest of richard and victoria mackenzie-childs, the owners and founders of the mackenzie childs home decor empire. i stayed in their home, an incredible farmhouse overlooking a lake, and situated less than a mile from their headquarters in aurora, new york. i slept in a house dripping with pattern and flowers and the kind of joyful, unapologetic whimsy that rearranges something in you. wildflowers were in jars, vases, buckets, rainboots! every room was filled with flowers and fragrance! their gardens went on forever…wildflowers galore, ducks weaving through the beds, bees drunk on all of it, color in every direction you looked. and tucked into that chaos was a plaque that read “let us dance in the sun, wearing wild flowers in our hair.” what a mantra!

i think about that adventure and that quote more than i probably should admit. i thought about it again as i painted this one.

our garden here is giving a bit less this time of year. late-summer thinning means color is precious again, not just plentiful. every red, every wild pink, that one perfect lavender bloom…i am savoring them all before they’re gone.

summer, i need a few more weeks of you. give me a few more bouquets like this. i’m not quite done dancing. 😊

painting this sundae takes me back in time.my grandpa owned a drugstore with a soda fountain, and my dad worked the coun...
08/06/2026

painting this sundae takes me back in time.

my grandpa owned a drugstore with a soda fountain, and my dad worked the counter after school sometimes, making ice cream floats for the cute girls in the neighborhood.

as a small child, farrell’s ice cream parlour was basically my mecca. if you were lucky enough and hungry enough, your table could order “The Zoo”: 8.5 pounds of ice cream and sherbet, five toppings, bananas, whipped cream, almonds, cherries, and little plastic zoo animals to take home! whoa! hello, sugar rush!

decades later, i found myself scooping cones for a summer at baskin robbins. different era, different clientele (john mellencamp, bobby knight) but the sticky counters and sugar-high customers!!

funny how one glass of ice cream can hold so much history!

international travel is hands-down my favorite summertime activity. culture experienced. cuisine savored. memories made....
08/04/2026

international travel is hands-down my favorite summertime activity. culture experienced. cuisine savored. memories made. yes please! it cracks something open in me every time.

as an artist, it has become a true necessity. inspiration, environmental change, and respite all refuel and reconfigure my hardwiring. when i travel, everything slows. my pace. my breath. my brain, believe it or not! my eyes drink in the scenery while my brain quietly catalogs it all. the smells, the textures, the joyous layers of color that make my heart swell. it’s overload, but the gentlest kind. the kind that fills instead of drains. so when i return to the studio, i return different. recharged, ready and open to possibility.

my parents were travelers. i am a traveler. and we have raised travelers. i actually have my parent’s suitcase that my mom took on her first trip to europe and they later took on their honeymoon and years of travels after that. it is worn at the corners, scarred with miles, older than most of my memories. and it’s where all of this began. their stories of foreign adventures, their photos and souvenirs, inspired me to want to see the world. from the lavender fields of provence to the fountains of tivoli gardens to the white washed alleys of mykonos! and now i fill their suitcase with my travel memories. 🧳

travel isn’t optional for me. it’s essential. non-negotiable, like breathing or sleep. each trip leaves behind more than souvenirs and photographs; it leaves behind transformation. inspiration and enrichment no studio wall could ever offer me. every journey makes my paintings richer and makes me a better artist. in the end, experience is one of the greatest teacher i have. and i am a devoted A+ student.

it started in kindergarten. a cute boy in my class, charlie harvey, wore a duck costume for our halloween parade, and th...
07/30/2026

it started in kindergarten. a cute boy in my class, charlie harvey, wore a duck costume for our halloween parade, and that was it for me. my heart swooned, and i was smitten, feathers and all.

my aunt and uncle didn’t help matters. their house had a whole room of duck decoys, a duck-themed bathroom, and a phone shaped like a mallard that quacked instead of ringing. so fun!!! if you were a kid and already duck-obsessed, that house was basically the taj mahal!

and then there were my grandparents, storytellers through and through, which meant every story got better with the retelling! they got the biggest kick out of a boy crazy 5 year old me and so never let the charlie harvey duck obsessed tale go untold. they told it every time i came to town, or they came to visit us, every time a duck so much as crossed our path. that story followed me! all the way to my wedding day, actually, when they handed me this small hand-carved wooden duck and told me it was officially time for them to put charlie harvey to rest. and so they did.

34 years later, i think they’d get a kick out of how i picked it back up and this time, it is being told it with paint just one more time! oh how i do love a good story!

my grandpa always had a garden. tomatoes, beans, and whatever fruit was in season, rows of it. as a kid i wanted my own ...
07/28/2026

my grandpa always had a garden. tomatoes, beans, and whatever fruit was in season, rows of it. as a kid i wanted my own patch, so one summer i planted strawberries in the backyard, certain i’d be harvesting baskets of them by july.

the rabbits had other plans.

every time a berry started to blush red, it disappeared overnight. i never got to pick a single one.

turns out i wasn’t cut out to be a farmer. but i became a painter and a baker instead. and somehow it all came full circle: strawberry pie is my daughter’s favorite, and i bake her one every birthday. and they are one of my favorite subjects to paint!

i never gave up on strawberries, i just changed how i grew them.

there’s a reason gerberas have obsessed painters and poets for centuries. egyptians saw them as devotion to the sun. cel...
07/23/2026

there’s a reason gerberas have obsessed painters and poets for centuries. egyptians saw them as devotion to the sun. celts believed they could hold your sorrows for you. and across numerous cultures, gerberas have symbolized gratitude and happiness for being alive. amen to that!

all well and good, but here’s what gets me every time i paint them: gerberas don’t do chill!!! they’re not a laid-back, easy happiness. they’re the celebratory, dance-in-the-street kind. the kind of happiness that bubbles up and spills over before you can stop it. the kind you feel in your chest before you even know why you’re smiling.

every petal shouts with color and joy. orange bleeding into red at the tips, yellow blazing at the center like it’s trying to outshine the sun itself! and here, set against a violet blue backdrop that just makes the happiness pop! it’s like my whole canvas is in on the celebration. a celebration that happens to be sitting in a vase!

how can you not celebrate this life we live? i am! happily! with a paintbrush in hand, one petal at a time! cheers, friends! have a great day!

there was a lorikeet named ziggy and a woman, named sammy, who lived across the street from me growing up in california....
07/21/2026

there was a lorikeet named ziggy and a woman, named sammy, who lived across the street from me growing up in california. sammy was unlike any grown-up i knew … twiggy haircut, giant hoop earrings, feather-cuffed sweaters, bell bottoms. a retired filipino model with a much older husband who was always traveling, she had no kids of her own, but an open door for every kid on the block. she was the first adult who told us to call her by her first name. and at six years old, that felt like the coolest thing in the world.

her front door and windows were always open, music playing, and there was ziggy perched in his cage in kitchen on one of those shepherds hook bird stands. she’d let him out and he’d land right on your finger, drinking nectar out of your palm like it was nothing. we were all convinced he’d fly off one day. he never did.

sammy had the latest music, the best snacks, and she taught us all to hula hoop in her front yard while ziggy sat patiently on her shoulder watching us fail to keep those hula hoops at waist level!

as an adult, i think about how much of her time and space we must have filled. a woman with no kids of her own, a traveling husband, and a house full of neighborhood kids every afternoon and that bird kept her company at night. i didn’t understand any of that then. i just knew her house had the best bird and the best music and the coolest lady on the block.

it is my theory that all became right with the world when the first sunflower bloomed. seriously, is there a flower happ...
07/16/2026

it is my theory that all became right with the world when the first sunflower bloomed. seriously, is there a flower happier or able to brighten up a room or your spirits more than a sunflower?!

in college, just outside of campus, there was a u-pick flower farm and my freshman dorm traditionally started the semester by all of us shuttling there while getting to know one another, picking armfuls of sunflowers, and handing them out all over campus. who doesn’t need a little sunshine as they start school?? strangers, new friends, professors, whoever crossed our path that day could have a sunflower! just because.

years later, there’s still something about that bold burst of yellow and orange against a wild teal-blue sky that just makes you want smile and do a little happy dance. these beauties don’t do subtle. they turn toward the sun. they take up space. they demand joy!

painted the same way i remember carrying those armfuls of flowers: a little chaotic, a whole lot of joy. here’s to passing on a bit of sunshine and positivity today to you from me.

let me tell you about my mother-in-law’s fruit tray.in her day, there wasn’t a melon safe from her crinkle knife. not in...
07/14/2026

let me tell you about my mother-in-law’s fruit tray.

in her day, there wasn’t a melon safe from her crinkle knife. not in her kitchen, not in our city, not in our three neighboring counties! word traveled. people requested her fruit trays.

she had this uncanny sixth sense for picking the perfect melon. she’d thump it once, maybe give it a look, and she just knew. it was amazing. always ripe, and always sweet. just perfection. no guessing, no gambling on a dud at the family reunion. she’d walk out of that grocery store with the good one every single time, like she had a direct line to the produce gods.

and the presentation? exquisite! fanned slices, fancy cuts, and variety of fruits in color and size, arranged like she was plating for a magazine, not a folding table at the church potluck. she took real pride in it. every family party, every church event, a fruit tray showed up looking like a still life before it ever got touched.

here’s a nod to that legacy and my exquisite mother-in-law.

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