Editor’s note: Jim Everton is a self-taught abstract artist whose work is in art collections from Dallas, Texas to Paris, France. His portfolio is on Facebook. He is also the husband of Raising America’s social media producer, Anna Gonzalez.

This painting is a real and true collaboration, and it was really great working with Kyra on the design and development of the piece.

During our meeting we agreed on one of my preliminary designs and the color scheme we would be working with. Rather than using overt parenting images in this piece, Kyra and I decided on doing something that evoked family and parenting without being too obvious. The background is meant to be tumultuous and exuberant at the same time-just like life.

I began working with the idea of a nest of stars, which, of course, represent us and the nest represents the family. Kyra and I both liked the idea of these stars being scattered out across the canvas from bottom to top, like they were rising, or being lifted upward. The colors we went with were chosen to work with the design of Kyra's office, and I wanted the painting to be bright and vibrant, but not too distracting. The space was being designed to be on camera after all.

Kyra mentioned in our meeting that she wanted the name of the show to be featured in the piece, and rather than going crazy hand lettering "Raising America," I was able to have a stencil made for the job. We included the HLN dialog box for obvious reasons, but I really do love the shape and I thought that it would balance the swirling chaos in the background really well.

I hope you enjoy this piece and I would love to know what you think when you look at the painting. Tweet @KyraHLN or me at @Everzalez with the #RaisingAmerica hashtag or leave your thoughts on Facebook.com.