Warrior Heart Gallery is a creative care initiative founded by artist and retired U.S. Army First Sergeant Dr. Michael Novotny. It offers spaces where veterans, service members, helping professionals, and community members can explore their experiences through art, reflection, and meaningful conversation.

The name Warrior Heart speaks to the human being beneath the armor. It recognizes that strength is not only found in endurance, discipline, or action. Strength can also be found in vulnerability, imagination, connection, and the courage to create something new from what we have carried. Warrior Heart Gallery uses trauma-aware, skill-based creative practices to support reflection, connection, and personal transformation. Participants do not need to identify as artists or have any previous art experience. The focus is not on producing perfect artwork. It is on slowing down, becoming curious, and allowing the creative process to reveal what words alone may not reach.

Through workshops, Creative Care experiences, collaborative art projects, exhibitions, retreats, and facilitated conversations, Warrior Heart Gallery helps people explore themes such as identity, transition, belonging, grief, resilience, and becoming. This is more than a place to make art. It is a space for tending the stories we carry—and imagining what may come next.