About the Author

“My Butterfly” was written by Virginia Urani. She also took the photographs and created the watercolor paintings as she watched her little friend. She lives with her husband, John, on a mountain in Hayesville, North Carolina.

Virginia studied art at the Kansas City Art Institute and Wichita State University. She was an artist for Hallmark Cards before joining IBM, where she worked for 20 years. She continued to study and develop her art during her years in the corporate world. She has taught watercolor painting at the John C. Campbell Folk School since 2006. She is the Studio Assistant for the Painting Department. She has also taught watercolor painting in Tuscany.

In 2016, she was awarded a Regional Artist Project Grant from the North Carolina Arts Council, to create drawings and watercolor paintings of the living trees in the Bonsai Garden in Asheville, to capture the characteristics of the individual specimans. The grant allowed her to spend a week working in the garden at the North Carolina Arboretum. In 2018, she applied for a Residency at Wildacres in Little Switzerland, NC to create a book from paintings and photographs made at the Wildacres Spring Gathering in 2017. She was granted a week-long Residency in August, 2018 by the Blumenthal Foundation. "My Butterfly" is a result of the work done during that time.

Virginia works in several media including oil, pen and ink, pencil, and watercolor. She loves the beauty of the mountains, especially the wildflowers. Through her work, she invites you to enjoy the loveliness of the world around us.