Our Christmas Mural (2023)

Just before she and her adolescent son Parker are about to head to her small hometown of Wellington for the Christmas break, widowed Olivia Carver, an artist in her own right but one with a severe case of artistic block, learns that there is a high likelihood that she will lose her job as a curator at the New York Gallery of Young Artists in the new year solely due to lack of funding. She fears the uncertainty even more for Parker, who has retreated into a shell ever since his father Tom passed. She moved to New York City to eke out that life as an artist which was only punctuated by her marriage to Tom and having Parker. But she is excited to see that the art scene in Wellington has progressed during her absence with a Christmas mural contest for a prominent exterior wall in town, a contest she doesn't plan on entering due partly to her block. Not submitting an entry doesn't stop her from winning the contest in her mother Betty submitting one of her old paintings as an entry on her behalf. In the process, Olivia keeps running into Will Campbell, the contest runner-up, the two who have had one antagonistic encounter after another up to this point. But in the two learning more about the other, including the honorable reasons that led to them unfortunately butting heads, they begin to be a support for the other, art and otherwise, including Will helping Olivia with the mural as a second pair of creative eyes. As they start to fall for each other, the question becomes if she will take a chance with Will and abandon the path she and Tom had envisioned for themselves and Parker in New York City.—Huggo