When Lena Walker is grasping for ideas, she said, she closes her eyes.

Sometimes images simply come to her, surfacing like through water.

And sometimes they come to her in dreams.

"I wake up and want to put it on canvas," she said.

Always, she said, when she shows her epiphanies to clients, their reply is that it was just what they were hoping for.

"I want to bring people happiness. A piece of positive mood," the 37-year-old said, speaking with the lilt of a Ukranian accent. "I think I have positive energy and a sweet personality, and I put it into my art. I never work when I have a bad mood. People will feel it."

Maybe it sounds relaxing, the emotion-guided work of a painter, sketcher and sculptor.

And Walker's method produces mesmerizing creations. Her murals are whimsical, and her portraits are dreamy impressions of life, with a photographic accuracy that is enhanced and brightened, like the canvas is glowing from within.

But getting to this point, said Walker, who is working to establish herself in North Idaho after moving here last year, has taken a life of intense work and study.

"This is what I've been doing all my life," Walker said. "People tell me, 'It's like starving artist, you should be like a bookkeeper.' I say no, I will prove to the world I'm an artist, not something else. This is me."

Walker was introduced to the art world when she was a little girl living in Chuguev, Ukraine, she said. Her mother, a dabbling artist, noticed her daughter's obsession with drawing and gave her some pointers.

Walker burned through pencils practicing, she remembered.

"I loved to do it, like other kids playing with dolls," she said.

Encouraged, her mother signed Walker up to attend art school after school when she was 10.

It was no finger painting class.

The school lasted four hours every day, she said. She attended dutifully until she was 15, the end of high school in the Ukraine.

"It was like a second school," she said. "There was a lot of homework. I didn't have time for playing, friends, boyfriends. I kept focusing on two schools."

The time wasn't wasted. When she entered the Kharkov Art College at 16, she was chosen for exclusive specialty classes, like a painting class where 300 applied and only 10 were accepted.

"The classes were very small," she said, adding that anything less than an A on tests meant not passing. "We were drawing and painting from early morning until late at night."

Enduring an hour and a half ride home on the bus and train and trolley, she added, she fell asleep as soon as she returned.

The only time to do her homework was on the bus ride to school in the morning, when she sketched and painted the other commuters.

"They would just smile and look at me," she said with a laugh.

She graduated from college at 21, she said, and stayed in the city of 3 million to teach private school and produce commissioned work.

Art buyers became scarce, however, with the fall of communism in the country in the 1990s, which crushed the local economy.

"People, they think about how to buy bread, not picture," Walker said.

She broadened her base by venturing into Germany for several months at a time, where she painted famous buildings on street corners and sold to passersby. In tourist towns, she set up an aisle on the street and painted small paintings all day long.

She landed two successful arts shows, she added.

"It was a lot of work there," she said.

She first came to the U.S. when she was 27, she said, after marrying an American man she had met in the Ukraine.

Her artwork took a short hiatus while she was living with him in Chicago, she said, but when anyone saw her work, she had immediate offers for projects. When she and her husband moved to Seattle, she added, she picked up large-scale projects like massive murals on residences' walls, one covering 15,000 square feet, another 10,000.

"I did a lot of different styles, from modern to Michelangelo. Different styles would fit in people's houses," she said. "I did a lot of kids' rooms, like magic forests with interesting and cute creatures. It was very nice and kind, and kids feel safe there."

Now divorced, Walker migrated to North Idaho last summer, when she agreed to paint the Plummer home of a repeat patron. She was allowed to stay in the home while she worked, she added, with her 15 and 17-year-old children.

"These customers, they become my friends," she said.

She chose to stay in North Idaho because of the art interest here and the quality of life, she said. Today living in Post Falls and looking for a new studio, she has a few projects in the works.

She is pursuing a new technique, she added, where she makes a painting three dimensional by adding modeling clay to the canvas and fashions it with wood carving tools.

"I don't like to be stuck in one style," she said. "I'm still learning, still experimenting."

For information on her artwork, go to www.lenawalker.com.

She is open to wherever her art takes her next, she said.

"I just take it step by step," she said. 'I will see if I stay in an area where people buy and appreciate my art. I want to stay positive."