From the earliest time that I can remember I was painting and drawing. I'm thankful that my parents always kept me in art supplies! I'm not sure that I've always treated my art as a way to communicate worthwhile messages, but I've always loved it dearly. 

For many years while I was raising kids, I sold art to help pay the bills. These were years that I was building my skills and growing in my love of texture, powerful composition, and materials. The things I loved to paint during these years were the compelling landscapes and flowers around me. Every new morning brought me inspiration for paintings; I couldn't wait to get home to put brush to paper and try to say how I saw the things around me. I'm so grateful for all that I learned during these times. You can recognize my paintings from these growing years by their realism and contrast.

The stage after these growing years was a period of teaching art here in my hometown of Cumming. I didn't know how to convey either satisfying technique or powerful messaging, so these years were very frustrating to me, even though they included many inspiring "students" who taught me more than I taught them!

Alongside the teaching jobs was a consuming passion for learning about abstraction and new materials. I thought that I was becoming an abstract artist, but I think now that I was just branching out to desperately seek artistic outlets besides realism. The paintings from these years, which are very recent, are confused and abstracted landscapes, often canyons and mountains. My daughter says they all look alike, and I tell her that's because I try to paint what is in my head again and again, till I get it right! My "canyon" abstracts are about journey, change, God, and Heaven. All of this new knife-painted abstraction culminated in a desire to create art which is narrative and experimental. I gravitated toward motifs which meant things to me: birds, rocks, doors.

The latest phase in my "artist's journey" has been experimentation and joy as I use digital collage, knife painting and all other types of painting to learn new things and throw together many elements in a quest for fun and powerful images. I'm currently painting and drawing on top of stacks and stacks of old paintings, at an alarming rate. I'm creating figural art for the first time in my life. Mostly I'm learning a lot and am excited to see what the coming years bring in opportunities to show humanity and love on a piece of canvas or a slip of paper. 

Thank you for visiting my site.