Bio
Growing up in a small, crowded, midwestern house, often drove me into the woods for peace. That early connection to the natural world remains strong. Taking art classes after high school, experimenting with clay, photography, painting and sculpture, led to a BFA in painting from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1982 and later, an NEA grant for early work.
Life took me to Philadelphia in 1990, where I painted with Mural Arts Philadelphia as it grew into an internationally recognized public art program. Drawn into the arena of art and community, I continued painting murals while earning an M.Ed., and ultimately taught art in Philadelphia Public Schools for the next 13 years.
The pull to focus on my own art again, along with other significant life changes, led to early retirement and a return to the west coast, settling in Vancouver, Washington where I currently live and work. Recent paintings have been acquired by the Washington State Art Collection and several murals were commissioned by the city of Vancouver. The lush Pacific Northwest rainforests inform and inspire, providing endless opportunities for emotional, intellectual and spiritual exploration.
Artist's Statement
What I'm most interested in is our human connection to the natural world. We're far out of balance with nature as a species. How can we help recreate equilibrium?
A stand of 80 year old Douglas Fir are gone in a week, replaced by so-called affordable housing. While a constant drumbeat of urban “growth” circles every unclaimed patch of green left in the community where I live, I walk the forests in search of places that visually call to me, photographing in fall and winter when the lifecycle is most evident. Colors intensify, deciduous trees are shedding, plants go to seed, the forest floor springs to life with moss and mushrooms. Structures are revealed and intimate tangles are everywhere. Examining closely, time slows, boundaries between self and environment are blurred. I find this visceral state compelling.
Back in the studio, these photos are used as drawing material to play with digitally. You might see manmade objects in the paintings, nestled amongst plants and detritus. Sometimes they're personal symbols that tell a story, and sometimes they're discarded trinkets that talk about our alienation from nature in general. So, they represent connection or loneliness, or both.
In the garden, I cultivate native plants, quietly bearing witness to a ubiquitous loss in biodiversity, hopeful in the possibilities of regeneration. I make paintings and public murals to amplify my voice, painting small, cloistered spaces on large canvases and urban walls to convey the sense of wonder I feel in the forest, and to invite others to take a closer look at themselves and their connection to the natural world. These two processes, planting and painting are active meditations, actions taken with awareness and reverence for the threads of connectivity that run through the world.
