ABOUT

Of course, like many artists, the journey began as an innocent, naive girl, entertaining herself with crayons and paper, and though back shelved for quite some time, art resurfaced to take a hold of my life again.  Because I enjoy experimentation immensely, including happy accidents and learning from utter failures, each of my paintings has a unique character. Though I find the task of capturing the exquisite beauty of nature nearly impossible, I still attempt it, because it's really all I want to do, and frankly, I love a challenge. What some may see as the ordinary, I want to turn into the extroadinary.  The bold use of color in my paintings seems to be a common thread.  I am in love with color, the relationships between different colors, and the expressive quality in it.  When I can spread joy (or other emotions) through a painting or portrait, it clarifies my purpose here in this life. I have spent my entire life living in either a small town or the country, so I have been strongly influenced by nature, and have found beauty not only in the rolling hills of the Shenandoah Valley, but also the wide plains and dynamic mountain tops of Montana.  But after traveling around Italy, my perspective on how and why I make art changed dramatically.  Before that time, I was held back by fear and ignorance, and being in such an artistically rich atmosphere sparked an intense need to simply create, no matter what the results were.  Sometimes my work is loose and expressive, and sometimes it is controlled and organized; however, both methods are a direct reflection of my personality.  Overall, I simply want to connect with my viewers, and I try to do that by revealing my own feelings about each subject that I paint.