We recently had the chance to connect with Lerie Turner-McCormick and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Lerie, thank you for taking the time to reflect back on your journey with us. I think our readers are in for a real treat. There is so much we can all learn from each other and so thank you again for opening up with us. Let’s get into it: What is a normal day like for you right now?
A normal day for me right now looks very different from when I last spoke with CanvasRebel. Life has expanded in ways I couldn’t have imagined—both creatively and entrepreneurially. I’m now married, and my husband and I run a growing transportation company together, JEMZ LLC, here in New Orleans. I stay connected to Los Angeles as well, because my daughter lives there, so both cities shape my rhythm and my story.
Most mornings begin with meditation, vitamins, and a quiet walk in the park while listening to affirmation music. That early grounding helps me stay aligned before the intensity of the day begins. My husband sometimes gets in late from chauffeuring or executive protection work, so depending on his schedule, we either start the morning together or I let him rest while I move into my own morning flow.
When we are up early together, we hit the gym, and the drive becomes our “rolling business meeting.” That’s where we go over everything: which rentals are heading out or returning, which vehicles need servicing, what invoices or follow-ups are due, any upcoming client travel for executive protection, and how our financials are flowing. It’s a partnership in every sense—marriage, business, and vision. Throughout the day, we check in as things shift, because entrepreneurship is fluid and requires constant communication.
Once the operational side of JEMZ is handled, I transition into my creative world. This is where the Purpl3skyy part of my life comes alive—digital art, graphic design, writing, recording, and now truly stepping into consistent social media marketing. For a long time, I stayed shy about promoting myself. JEMZ grew through word-of-mouth, so marketing never felt urgent. But this season of my life is about visibility—owning my voice, my gifts, my story, and my creativity.
Most days, I take my laptop to Baldwin & Co., a beautiful bookstore and coffee shop here in New Orleans. It’s my creative sanctuary. I can sit there for hours writing chapters, creating content, or studying how to use AI tools to express my artistry more efficiently. It’s also where I expand the universe of my book Toxic Exit. The book is a multi-sensory healing experience—each chapter includes a piece from my 13-artwork series, The Shift Collection, along with poetic reflections and now music. I’m collaborating with Blitz Bang Muzik on two Poetic Soul projects: one inspired by Toxic Exit and one dedicated entirely to poetry-to-music storytelling. Those creative check-ins with my producer happen throughout my week as well.
By the end of the day, my husband and I reconnect. Sometimes I cook, sometimes we pick up dinner, but we always take time to compare notes, celebrate wins, decompress, and end the night with something relaxing before bed.
My days are full—beautiful, fluid, and purpose-driven. Writing it out made me realize that even when it feels like a lot, there is a rhythm forming. I’m building businesses with my husband, nurturing a creative brand rooted in healing and storytelling, and becoming more intentional about stepping into the fullness of who I am becoming.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
My name is Lerie Turner-McCormick, also known as Purpl3skyy, and I’m a digital artist, author, and creative entrepreneur. I create at the intersection of healing, storytelling, and visual expression. Most recently, I became a published author with the release of my book Toxic Exit, which I’m incredibly excited about. It’s a project that blends my art, poetry, and guided inner work into a multi-sensory healing experience designed to help people reclaim their mental and emotional real estate.
My artwork is a big part of that journey. I work in digital painting, abstract design, and charcoal/graphite. One piece in particular, “Elemental Essence,” holds special meaning for me because it marked the moment I reconnected with my creativity after a long quiet period. Someone close to me encouraged me to return to my art, and when this piece emerged, it felt like waking up again. CanvasRebel featured it in 2024, and shortly after it was selected for the “Nature’s Pulse” exhibit at ArtShare LA — a reminder that even work created in private seasons can still resonate in public spaces.
Alongside my creative work, I co-own JEMZ LLC with my husband — a luxury car rental, chauffeur, and executive protection business that has grown steadily through word-of-mouth and community trust. We work between Los Angeles and New Orleans, two cities that have shaped my discipline, my spirituality, and my creative voice in different ways.
Right now, I’m expanding my creative brand with a new musical genre I’m developing called Poetic Soul, in collaboration with Blitz Bang Muzik. We’re producing two projects simultaneously, including a companion album for Toxic Exit. It all ties back to my purpose: turning lived experience into art that heals, transforms, and helps people reconnect with themselves.
Appreciate your sharing that. Let’s talk about your life, growing up and some of topics and learnings around that. Who were you before the world told you who you had to be?
Before the world handed me labels, expectations, and survival scripts, I was a deeply intuitive and imaginative child — the kind who felt everything, noticed everything, and created instinctively. I was the girl who turned silence into stories, emotions into colors, and energy into movement. I didn’t know it then, but I was already expressing the same artistic language I use today across my art, poetry, and healing work.
Life taught me how to shrink before it taught me how to shine. I learned early how to be what others needed — the strong one, the responsible one, the peacekeeper, the survivor. Those roles helped me make it through some seasons, but they also pulled me away from the truest version of myself.
Before all of that, I was a creator in my purest form — a storyteller guided by spirit, not pressure. I trusted my imagination. I trusted my voice. I trusted that the world was big enough for my ideas.
Rediscovering that original version of myself is what allowed me to write Toxic Exit, create “The Shift Collection,” build Purpl3skyy as a brand, and step into Poetic Soul. I didn’t “become” this woman — I returned to her. She was always there, waiting beneath the noise.
And now, everything I create — my art, my book, my poetry — is rooted in honoring that girl and giving her a microphone.
Was there ever a time you almost gave up?
There was a moment in my life when I didn’t want to keep going the way I was going. It wasn’t about danger — it was about depletion. I had spent so many years carrying the emotional weight of others, holding everything together, being strong in rooms where no one was strong for me, that I didn’t realize how far I had drifted from myself.
It felt like my spirit had gone quiet. I was moving through life on autopilot, functioning… but not living. I remember waking up one day and realizing that I didn’t recognize the woman I had become. I had abandoned myself trying to survive experiences that were never meant to be my identity.
That moment — the moment I thought I was breaking — was actually the moment something in me refused to keep living small, silent, or unseen. It was the first spark of my awakening.
I didn’t need to be saved.
I needed to return to myself.
That was the beginning of my healing, my art, my book Toxic Exit, and the entire Shift Collection. I made a decision to reclaim my voice, my boundaries, and my mental real estate. The resilience didn’t come from fighting anyone else — it came from choosing myself for the first time in a long time.
And once I chose me, everything shifted.
Next, maybe we can discuss some of your foundational philosophies and views? What’s a belief or project you’re committed to, no matter how long it takes?
I’m committed to a lifelong mission: helping people reclaim the pieces of themselves they lost inside toxic relationships—starting with their own minds. That’s the heart of Toxic Exit, my art, my poetry, and my Poetic Soul project. Everything I create flows from one belief: healing is a multi-sensory experience, and when you give people more than words—when you give them sound, color, energy, story, and reflection—you open a doorway back to themselves.
I’m building something that isn’t just a book or an art collection or an album. It’s a long-term movement. A system that helps people shift their internal reality the same way I shifted mine. Some people work in one medium their whole life; I work in several because healing doesn’t speak just one language. It speaks through abstract art. Through spoken word. Through melody. Through color psychology. Through journaling and self-reflection. Through storytelling that mirrors our inner battles back to us.
I’m committed to expanding this work globally—one poem, one painting, one chapter, one song at a time. Whether it takes five years or fifty, I’m building a legacy that my children’s children can stand on: a model of self-awareness, emotional wealth, and spiritual resilience.
And this mission will grow as I grow. Toxic Exit is the foundation. The Shift Collection is the visual language. Poetic Soul is the sound. And every future project will continue carrying that same message:
You can take your power back. You can rewrite your story. And you can rise—beautifully, completely, and without apology.
Okay, so before we go, let’s tackle one more area. What is the story you hope people tell about you when you’re gone?
I hope people say I was a woman who refused to let the wounds of her past decide the worth of her future. Someone who took every bruise, every heartbreak, every betrayal and alchemized it into wisdom that others could rise from. I want my life to be remembered as proof that you can walk through fire and still come out shaping worlds with your bare hands.
I hope they say I didn’t just heal — I turned healing into an inheritance. That I shifted the trajectory for my children, their children, and the ones who will never know my name but will still feel the ripple of the choices I made. I hope they say I honored the women who came before me by breaking the chains that were meant to reach beyond me.
I want my legacy to be one of creative liberation — art that spoke when I couldn’t, words that held people through their darkest nights, and stories that reminded others that they were never alone in their struggle. I want people to remember that everything I touched, whether it was a canvas, a poem, or a life, came from a place of spiritual intention.
And when people talk about me, long after I’m gone, I hope they say:
“She helped me reclaim a part of myself I thought I had lost.”
“She made me believe I could shift my life, too.”
“She lived fully, fiercely, and on purpose.”
If nothing else, I want the story of my life to be this:
She came here to break cycles, uplift souls, and remind the world that transformation is always possible — even from the deepest pain.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://linktr.ee/purpl3skyy
- Instagram: @Purpl3skyy
- Youtube: @Purpl3skyy147
Image Credits
Book Cover – 4389372.jpg by geralt, sourced from Pixabay via Canva. Edited and designed by Lerie Turner-McCormick.
ArtShare LA Instagram
so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
