Bio:
Born in St. Louis, Mo., I began my career as a painter and public muralist in San Francisco, Ca., after completing a BFA in 1982 at the San Francisco Art Institute. Awarded an NEA grant for painting in 1986, I began exhibiting and painting murals throughout the city.
In 1989 after the birth of my son, we moved to Philadelphia, Pa. I began working as a muralist with Mural Arts Philadelphia, an internationally recognized non-profit mural program, while simultaneously earning a Masters in Education. After graduating, I took a position teaching art to children in the Philadelphia Public Schools for the next 13 years. Leading public art projects with children, such as community-wide murals, giant puppet parades, set designs for musicals and organizing children's art museum exhibitions, allowed for another way of fostering a relationship between art and community. As much as I loved working with children, eventually I felt the pull to return to my own painting.
Retiring early from teaching, I began to paint again full time, when I returned to the west coast in 2014. Settling in the Pacific Northwest near family and friends, I resumed my painting and public mural career in Vancouver, Wa., where I currently live and work, inspired by the lush rainforests and people that surround me.
Artist Statement:
I've always looked to nature to express ideas. It's where I find echos of my own emotional, intellectual and spiritual experience.
I walk the forests in search of places that visually lure me in, 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. I examine closely, time slows, boundaries between self and environment are blurred. I find this state compelling.
Back in the studio, I use these photos as drawing material to play with digitally. I paint small places on large canvases to convey the wonder I feel when I'm in the forest, and to invite others to take a closer look. Through the painting process, I'm free to explore a meditative state of being, with awareness and reverence for the threads of connectivity that run through the world.
