COEUR d'ALENE — North Idaho's Toby Keough sees her murals as pieces of visual excitement, bursts of vivid color that spread from one corner of a space to another.

"It just feels like spreading a little joy," Keough said. "Does it make you smile? That's my goal." 

Keough's maximalist style of art and design fills the room with pieces of interest of all sizes. 

"I just recently bought that big painting, but I've never really been able to buy art," Keough said. "The art I could do was the only art I had."  

Through a hallway lined with floating fish and flowers, she added glass bubbles to the walls to create the impression of three-dimensional bubbles of water among the frolicking fish. 

"I've always done murals. When I was in high school, my mom would let me paint her walls," Keough recalled. "I did the walls at Lakeland Jr. High School when I was in junior high." 

As an adult, when she and her husband started a family, she painted the bedrooms for her four children. 

"Not having gone to art school, I didn't know until someone told me I'm an intuitive artist. I used to feel really bad about it," Keough said.

Painting for herself took a backseat for several years as her primary medium became furniture building. Though people would tell her that creating furniture was too challenging to do as work, she was undeterred. 

"When I was young, I would say I'm going to live forever," Keough said. 

However, after a major surgery, Keough wasn't able to do the work the same way. 

"I couldn't do it anymore. And when COVID hit, I just started painting once I realized it wasn't as physically hard," Keough said. "You evolve and change; I've always loved painting." 

Keough reconnected with painting with enthusiasm, creating pieces for Doma Coffee displayed at Emerge CDA and Terrain in Spokane. 

When the family wanted to build a new home in Coeur d'Alene and move from Hayden, Keough saw it as an opportunity to work with a new sort of canvas and create something unique for both her and the family. 

"This house has always felt like an art project. My husband is a builder/contractor and so we drew it out on a napkin and had an engineer work on it," Keough said. 

Though there was uncertainty about whether the designs would look the same as they had drafted, the Keoughs were all in on the project: her husband and one of their children framed the house while she handled the tilework, painting and woodwork. 

"My dad was a drywaller, so I always dreamt of round walls and curvatures," Keough said. "It feels like it's love that me and my husband have poured into it." 

The love and effort poured into their home earned the family a feature in a "Better Homes and Gardens" sibling publication, "Do It Yourself magazine," in 2023. 

Keough said the opportunity to bring a space to life with color makes her happy.  

"It's really fun to do homes. I kinda start everything with a piece of chalk and draw it out and then start painting," Keough said. "I want people to be excited to be in their space. It does something to you, seeing the art." 

Visit www.sites.google.com/view/art-by-toby-rae/home to see more of Keough's work.

    It took artist Toby Keough a couple of weeks to paint the bedroom, which features painted flowers and her interpretation of a Chinese lion for good luck.
  

    Toby Keough created a sprawling papier-mâché cake for an art event last year.
  

    A mural of a lucky cat and pink flowers covers a wall of artist Toby Keough's home in Coeur d'Alene.
  

    Artist Toby Keough painted the living room wall of her Coeur d'Alene home last year as a birthday present to herself, filling the space with more of her iconic pink flowers.
  

    A vintage painting of a man adorned with flowers in the style of a receipt displays the year the Keough family built their Coeur d'Alene house.