Meet the Artist

I was born in Florida and lived here for most of my 65 years. For a short time, when I was very young, we lived in a rural mountain area of southwest Virginia. Other than that, my life has been lived very near either the Atlantic coastline or the Gulf of Mexico.

My work is always heavily influenced by the coastlines of Florida. On the East Coast, there are dunes and seagrass and waves and sea foam. On the West Coast, there are deep turquoise colors of the Gulf and the deep pink and orange of sunsets. My work is abstraction, so I am never trying to recreate the beach or the water, but the colors always find a way to influence everything I paint. No matter how hard I try, I cannot keep the blues, greens, and pinks from finding their way into everything I do.

I began my childhood painting rocks in the mountains of Virginia with acrylics and oils. I transitioned into mixed media in my teen years and worked heavily in collage. I studied art and design in college, but succumbed to the parental pressure to get a more practical degree.

During the years of raising four children, I did anything I could to keep creating. There were times when that was simply painting kids’ clothes and toys for gifts. I have painted murals and furniture and done many photography jobs. Once my kids were out on their own, my serious art journey resumed, and I worked mainly with acrylics, and every once in a while, I add a little collage underneath as a little surprise.

Abstraction is what I do.  It is the “language” that I speak. I didn’t set out to abstract the things around me, but life led me to it. When my third son was born in 1993 with Down syndrome, the world I knew and the person that I was changed forever. My mind thinks differently and deeply. I can be prone to an obsession with living and creating “outside the box”. I have trouble with conformity and presumption. I believe this is present in all of my artwork.

The quote by Michael Tyzack that I love- “the eye not told what to see, sees more” is aligned with my deep belief that if labels did not exist, we could all become so much more. Thus, my paintings are filled with so much more when there is no representation or realism. The painting can be so much more.