It’s a ménage à trois. You, me and the painting. Not in THAT sense. In the literal sense it means “household of three.” If you live with a piece of my work, there’ll be three of us in your home or your office, or even computer screen: you, the painting and, yes, a little bit of me.   Since we’ll be living together, there are some things you should know.

Not unusually, I’ve traveled in many directions in life, but, looking back, it seems art was woven through all of them.

I’ve returned to full-time artmaking via a circuitous route. As a child I adored making things from scratch. I drew and painted but also knit, sewed, embroidered and did needlepoint. The idea of starting with something as innocuous as yarn or yardgoods and making A Thing captured my imagination. When I was maybe 10, I remember attempting to fashion myself a pair of sandals out of cardboard. I had some fairly restrictive footwear rules due to a podiatrically well-meaning mother, which meant I wore clunky and oh-so unfashionable saddle shoes (I got to choose between brown, black or navy blue saddles) well into elementary school. I lusted after cute sandals and sporty Keds. My shirt cardboard flip-flops fell apart on the walk from my room to the other end of the house. Nowadays, I’d paint them and call it “sculpture.”

Looking back, I see the makings of an artist. I saw faces in trees and rocks and the aggregate in the sidewalk. I fantasized about wire being extruded from my index finger so I could draw in the air and objects would result. (It seems that now you can actually do that!

Fast-forward three decades. I worked as a journalist. I raised two beautiful kids into delightful adults. I went to art school, which was not “practical” but it felt right. At the Oregon College of Art and Craft I got the encouragement I needed to plumb my own depths and express what I found. It wasn’t easy.

Still, I resisted. I worked and exhibited for a while, but fear hobbled me. It’s a long, but universal story. I let my creativity lie fallow for seven years.

Beginning in late 2014, I experienced a series of epiphanies about life’s essentials. As it turned out, making art was on the list, so I aired out my studio and began a year of intensely passionate and intuitive creation. This was a change from my former approach to art-making, which had been more constrained by The Little Voice That Judges. This past year I have quite literally relegated that voice to a small box in the corner of my studio, where it is allowed to sit, but must not speak or get out. If it does either, it gets a swift swat on the behind and is sent to bed without supper.

My work is responsive in nature. Images aren’t planned and if they are, plans are allowed to change. Lines, colors and forms suggest directions to be followed, and followed they are, until the work reaches a satisfying balance and a beauty.

Most often, I paint with acrylic and slowly build up colors, textures and forms through many layers of translucent glazes. One painting may have several paintings beneath it. A painting is never a failure – it just hasn’t arrived yet.

Back to our three-way living arrangement: I have a sense that the consciousness-opening energy that goes into my work, “comes out” when you, the viewer, experience it. Art is communication, and I hope my work/play communicates beauty, connection, wholeness, healing.

Please enjoy and if you have questions or comments, contact me