Art grows where people make room for it.
There was a time when I thought creativity lived in the spaces between everything else.
After work. After responsibilities. After everyone else had what they needed.
A quiet corner. A late night. A little more paint on my hands before starting again the next morning.
Over time, I started realizing creativity was never separate from the rest of my life. It was being shaped by it.
The conversations. The challenges. The places I worked. The family I was raising. The people who created space when doubt was easier than continuing.
Art Given Room to Move
In 2026, I joined The People’s Artist, a national fundraising campaign benefiting The Art of Elysium.
I was one of many artists who stepped forward, shared their work, and invited others into a larger effort built around creativity, healing, and human connection.
The fundraiser gave my paintings and my story the opportunity to reach a much larger audience. My work continued through a couple of voting rounds, and along the way people voted, shared, encouraged me, and carried the story into places I could not reach alone.
The broader 2026 fundraising effort reports more than $6.8 million raised.
I am proud that my art became part of that effort and was given room to move.
Selected Artist
The People’s Artist 2026
$6,892,628Reported raised through the broader 2026 fundraising effort benefiting The Art of Elysium.
I was one of many artists who stepped forward to share their work in support of creativity, healing, and human connection.
Creating Space
Every painting on this page asks the same question from a different direction:
Sometimes that space comes through teaching. Sometimes through family. Sometimes through learning how to carry responsibility, change, and creativity at the same time.
These paintings became stepping stones toward what would eventually become Giving Back—a larger practice built around generosity, public art, and unexpected human connection.
Three Paintings. One Conversation.
Teach Them, Family Garden, and Finding Balance each explore a different kind of space: the space to learn, the space to be nurtured, and the space to keep creating while life continues moving.
Teach Them by Joey Embers
Teach Them
Before we create, we are shaped.
Someone showed us something was possible before we believed it ourselves. Someone created space. Someone passed something forward.
Teach Them explores that quiet exchange between people. Teaching is not only transferring knowledge. It is transferring permission.
Permission to try.
Permission to struggle.
Permission to discover.
Eventually the lessons we receive become something we have the responsibility to grow.
Family Garden
A garden is an act of belief.
You plant before you see the bloom. You tend before you know what it will become.
Every flower carries an invisible story of roots, patience, care, and countless moments that happened beneath the surface.
Creativity works the same way.
Behind every finished painting is an ecosystem: conversations, encouragement, sacrifices, failures, adjustments, and people quietly tending the soil.
And when something grows, it creates seeds for something else.
Family Garden by Joey Embers
Finding Balance by Joey Embers
Finding Balance
But growth brings a new question.
How do we carry everything that matters?
Family.
Work.
Creativity.
Responsibility.
Change.
For a long time, I thought balance was about reaching a place where everything finally stopped moving.
I am learning balance is movement. It is adapting. Listening. Adjusting. It is learning how to keep creating while life continues changing around us.
This experience became a seed.
Taking part in the fundraiser reinforced something I already believed: creativity does not end with the person creating.
It moves.
Every conversation.
Every bit of encouragement.
Every opportunity given.
Every space created.
It also pushed me to ask a new question:
That question continues to shape my work through Giving Back, an evolving public art initiative built around generosity, discovery, and human connection.
A painting. A conversation. A person who finally believes there is room for them.
That is how gardens grow.