?Flash back to the year 2000.

Deborah Chaskin – a local artist – was walking around Amsterdam. She had a lot on her mind. Her father was dying and she had gone on this trip to Europe for a meditation retreat. She was trying to build up the strength to cope with all that was going on back at home. But she wasn't getting much out of the guided retreat, so she decided to go off on her own.

As she's walking around the streets of Amsterdam, she sees a vision of a butterfly. And suddenly she began to think about how life is kind of a like a butterfly coming out of its cocoon: you can't rush things in life, she thought. Sometimes you have to give life space.

And then this phrase popped into her mind: "Just like the butterfly, I too will awaken in my own time."

"Life isn't easy," Chaskin said, when Patch interviewed her for this article, now 10 years later. "What you think is adversity you can really turn into something beautiful."

And that's the message Chaskin wants to spread to the world; and she's trying to do it through her artwork.

Chaskin, who lives in Westfield, uses watercolor paints and sometimes cutouts of magazines to create abstract landscapes. She then takes a picture of what she's created and uses Adobe Photoshop to play around with the images, letting what she calls her "spirit" guide her through the computer program.

"I feel like a spirit gets into the computer," Chaskin said.

 Chaskin often writes a phrase or piece of poetry to go along with the final piece of artwork.

"It's amazing how quickly she does things," said Chaskin's husband, Lance. "It seems to flow out of her."

Chaskin said she's always wanted to be an artist. Even as a child, she always loved to draw.  

She got her opportunity to pursue her dream when she was laid off from her job in 2005. She was working as a systems engineer at Bell Labs and AT&T.

"My life would have been a lot easier if I hadn't been downsized," Chaskin said. "But it wouldn't have been as rich."

Chaskin decided to go to the Therapeutic Massage and Training Center in Westfield to get certified as a massage therapist.

"I felt like when I went into the school and out of the school I was a different person," she said.

She said she felt an inner peace, a deeper sense of self and she wanted to bring that message out through art and thereby to the world. That's when she delved deeper into her artwork.

Lance said through 22 years of marriage he's seen her talent and skills grow and evolve.

"Like a good wine, things get better with age," he said.

Chaskin is now working for a small financial company doing computer work and does massage therapy on the side. But she's not giving up on her artwork.

Her next project is writing a book called Feeling Purple: An Unfinished Journal (although she's also toying around with using the word "journey" instead of "journal"). It will be a book featuring her artwork but will have space on the pages for the reader to reflect upon how the art speaks to him or her. She wants the book to provide readers with an opportunity to look inward.

"The message is to look within yourself," she said.

If you would like to meet Deborah Chaskin and view some of her artwork, head to the City Grind on North Avenue tonight at 8 p.m. For a preview, you can go to Chaskin's website:www.feelingpurple.com.