By all accounts, the Mycoskie family redefines the notion of success: Before embarking on a painting career, patriarch Mike was the longtime orthopedic surgeon for the Texas Rangers; his wife, Pam, authored Butter Busters, a 1990s hit cookbook; their eldest son, Blake, founded the shoe company TOMS; their daughter, Paige, founded the retro lifestyle clothing line Aviator Nation; and Tyler, their youngest son, founded Dollar Driver Club, a members-only golf retailer. This all raises the question: What in the world do the Mycoskies eat for breakfast?

Along with gorging on bowls of proverbial Wheaties, the family regularly indulged in the power of positive thinking. “In junior high, my oldest son started writing motivational quotes on Post-it notes and putting them on his mirror, his desk, wherever he would see them every day,” Mike Mycoskie says. “We all picked up on it. We left notes to each other and to ourselves that could be seen constantly. It was an extremely encouraging environment.”

The family tradition of writing on Post-it notes has continued and, in recent years, Mycoskie began studying the science behind the power of words. He wondered: Did affirmation play a role in his family’s future, or is their collective success mere coincidence? “There’s a tremendous amount of validity to what you see and read, and if it’s repetitive it’s like a self-talk,” Mycoskie explains. “Even if it’s written on a Post-it, it’s kind of like talking to yourself, and it can rewire your brain and have an amazing effect on you.”

After retiring and permanently moving from Texas to a new, Architectural Digest-worthy custom home in Beaver Creek during the pandemic, Mycoskie took up painting. His subject matter? Motivational quotes. But these pieces aren’t cutesy dime store Live, Laugh, Love signs; instead, they’re huge canvases, screaming with bold colors and exacting messages (“You Can,” “Why Not,” “Never Stop Believing”) painted with surgical precision. Many of the pieces have two dimensions: When viewed up close, the letters are so big, they almost become geometric shapes—until you step back and take in each message as a whole.

To those who know Mycoskie, embarking on a second career as a septuagenarian wasn’t exactly a surprise. “The truth is I’ve always been very artistic,” explains the painter, who in August turned 75. “My mother was a great artist, and I was always into art. My wife reminds me that when we were first married 54 years ago, I used paint to decorate our apartments.” But when Mycoskie began practicing medicine, he mothballed his paintbrush for a scalpel.

Now his creative side defines him. Mycoskie has converted much of the couple’s garage into a painting studio and he leases an ancillary space in Edwards for his messier epoxy work. (“Epoxy is quite a process, and having three dogs in and out of the garage…it does not go well,” he laughs.) During the summer after much encouragement from friends and family, Mycoskie opened a pop-up gallery in Vail Village’s Solaris Plaza.

Addressing the why of his craft, he dubbed it AIM (an acronym for Affirmation, Inspiration, Motivation).

“I believe [my art] can be meaningful and important to people, their children, and their grandchildren,” he says. “Someone might say something encouraging to you once, but if you put those words in places where you read them over and over again, you’ll be wired to believe it.”

Of course, Mycoskie’s hope was that those who wandered into AIM would buy something, but even more important, he says, is that they left inspired. “People walk around and pause in front of what relates to them,” says family friend Jillian Dilorio. “They leave feeling better, changed, and motivated to pass along the positive.”

To that end, Mycoskie now has so many fans and benefactors that he has decided to focus solely on commissioned work. At press time, he was finishing up a couple custom pieces for a home in Beaver Creek and another in Fort Collins, but he’s also found a surprising niche in the corporate world, which is leaning into positive messaging.

And he's also planning to follow the ephemeral AIM Gallery with a small showroom in the valley that will function more like a business office rather than a full-fledged gallery. “Maybe we should have predicted that the interest would go this way,” he says. “But we didn’t, so we’re going with what people are asking for.”