Chesley R Parfait

I was born in Southern Louisiana as the sixth of seven children. My family has artistic genes. For me, that showed up in my love of music and crafting/decorating. As a kid, my oldest sister taught me basics in Native American beadwork (we are members of a tribe near our birthplace), but I didn’t do much beyond bead rings. I dabbled in it here and there until adulthood. It wasn’t until my mid 20s that I attempted to venture beyond rings, and all that I made after was self-taught.

I started selling my jewelry under the name Simply Parfait around 2011. At the time, my ears weren’t pierced but I got so many requests to make earrings that I accepted…and they became my biggest seller. After a couple of years I decided to pierce my ears, and to this day earrings are the only jewelry I wear consistently. (Funny, right?) Over the years, I reduced the variety of jewelry I was making and decided to focus primarily on earrings.

In 2018 God moved me to Houston, Texas, and in 2021 something happened to shift me in many ways. My younger brother, a very gifted artist, passed away unexpectedly. A few months after he passed, I decided to honor his memory and process my grief in the healthiest way I could think of…painting. I in no way could ever match his skill in detail, so I chose to start on the opposite end, in the abstract. It became better balm than expected, and genetics seemed to be showing out the more I did it.

Almost a year later, I realized it was truly God whose hand was moving me this way. I started having dreams about it. I started to see that some of my past pieces were prophetic. In 2023, I completed a God-assignment, and once that ended my dreams upticked and had more clarity on where I was headed. It’s been a wild ride since then! I do still make earrings, but from a more artistic/inspirational approach. Taking on this painter’s mantle was something I could have never predicted. But I’m here for it!