My paintings are a visual connection to my love for the turns and tricks of language. I think about rhythm and color and how art can offer an image of glory or pain, harmony or strangeness. I like to take a walk in my paintings and conjure up a piece of nature, the beginnings of a visual story and a thread of connection between my path and yours. You might notice a sense of gesture, a quick stroke that is inherent to my own energy.
I work toward a sense of transparency, adding layers of paint for a visual texture and subtracting paint by rubbing it off with a cloth. You may have noticed that I let the paint ‘float’ and sometimes drip. . At the beginning, the painting and I are partners, sometimes I take the lead but most of the time the painting leads me and tells its own story.
About me…
I am a studio artist and educator, exhibiting my oil paintings at galleries and art festivals during the year. Since the summer of 2000 I teach a workshop called ‘The Visual Journal’ that I developed for Eastern Michigan University. It takes place for one week each August at Northwestern Michigan College in Traverse City, Michigan. I also teach the workshop for Wayne State University’s Art Therapy Department. Recently, I have been working with community organizations to help people develop an expressive relationship with art that already exists within.
I am an Adjunct Professor at Eastern Michigan University having received an M.F.A. in Painting in 1994.
I live with my husband Michael who is a blacksmith and our cat, Miss Colby. I have 2 grownchildren, Leslie and Eric and a grandchild, Indigo. I love to read, watch movies, take walks, practice yoga, visit with friends and family and travel.
