A full-time mom, the Apex resident has two young children to care for and she didn’t have the time or patience required for painting the still lifes she once loved.

So the 36-year-old found another way to unleash her inner artist, through a layered painting technique that fits right into her tumultuous life.

“It adds beauty to your life,” Heaton said of art in general. “It inspires, it warms up the soul.”

It also adds recognition.

The painting technique Heaton uses, commonly called “water-media,” builds up several layers of water and acrylic colors that blend with added water in different patterns. Several of Heaton’s pieces were chosen to decorate the WakeMed Apex Healthplex, which will open near N.C. 55 this winter.

It was nice for her work to be noticed, but art has been warming Heaton’s soul throughout her childhood and into college, where she didn’t study art but early childhood development.

“My brother was the one who actually went to art school,” Heaton, a slender, ethereal redhead, said with a laugh from her Apex home in the Cameron Ridge subdivision.

After college Heaton, an Atlanta native, found work as a preschool teacher, but she was always doing something creative on the side, whether it was scouring thrift stores for antique furniture or painting acrylic landscapes.

Then, life, a couple of moves and two kids came.

Seven years ago Heaton and husband John ended up in Apex. Their family now includes two little boys — Conley, 6, and Sam, 4.

It’s obvious when you walk through the doors of Heaton’s house — right down the road from the under-construction Healthplex — that it’s home to a creative spirit.

A vivid apple green coats the walls of the living room and kitchen. Red wallpaper featuring an intricate gold design dresses another room’s dimensions.

And everywhere there are the paintings. Thick, psychedelic swirls of color, in various sizes and hues, attached to and leaning against walls, mostly in Heaton’s front room studio.

In this room she points out a couple of her favorites — a purpled-hued piece she calls “Genie.” “Doesn’t it just look like what would pop out of a genie’s bottle?” she asks.

Heaton also employs a technique called “veining” that produces three-dimensional lines on the top layers of her paintings, usually in gold paint. “Genie” and other paintings feature these lines as well as the abstract shapes underneath that seem like different things to different people.

“A lady asked about one of my paintings one time, ‘Did you mean to put in the dragon?’’’ Heaton likes the ambiguity.

“I just have to go where the colors take me,” said Heaton, who said she’s often not sure where a painting is going to go when she starts it.

Building up the painting’s layers, up to 12 of them, can take as long as a week, since the individual layers have to dry in between.

The paintings’ abstract nature also provide Heaton a release from her very regimented life, although she wasn’t sure they were any good.

Heaton distinctly remembers the day she tried to find out, a furtive trip to a local gallery in between errands.

She remembers she must have looked a mess, with mismatched clothes and baby spit on a shoulder, but the gallery owner liked her work and began to feature it.

Heaton’s work can now be seen around town and in several private homes. She has sold a number of her works — which range in size from 8 by 10 inches to 22 by 30 inches — for from $200-$700.

She also joined the Apex Arts Council and connected to a whole group of local artists. A nice social outlet for a busy mom with two young boys, but mostly the painting remains something just for her.

Brief moments of abstract peace where she feels free.