I was born in Ardmore, Oklahoma and moved three days later. In all, my family relocated eight times before I was thirteen. I started junior high in Texas and finished in Nigeria, began high school at a girls' school in Switzerland and finished at a Quaker alternative school in the Appalachians. When my brother, sister and I were young, this was like interplanetary travel. We would wake to someone adjusting our spacesuits (corduroy pants and Keds), and ordering us out of the Mothership (backseat of a 1957 Chevy). We were expected to immediately gather information and specimens from the new planet (Get outside and play!). We usually stayed on one planet just long enough to learn to catch and release the smaller species of the local fauna, make up our own names for the flora and start to adopt the accent and mannerisms of the local dominant beings before being called back to the Mothership for imminent departure. The constants in this shifting life were my loving family (in various constellations of togetherness), an affinity for nature, and art. Drawing gave me a private, portable world, no matter where I found myself.
My formal training in art began at Goddard College where I studied figurative sculpture with Peter Rudnick. After moving to California I continued to study sculpture and began formal studies in drawing and printmaking with two inspiring teachers, Holt Murray and Howard Ikemoto, at Cabrillo College. I finished my degree in art at the University of California at Santa Cruz with a focus in lithography.
I began to work with pastels after the birth of my first child when I was searching for a medium that could be picked up and put down without the fuss and time commitment required for pulling prints. I found that after years of working primarily in black and white, I was enchanted with color. My exploration with pastels was deepened early on by a workshop with master pastelist, Kitty Wallis. The introduction of sanded surfaces has led my work into a perfect marriage of drawing and painting.
My career as an artist is interwoven with my deep involvement with my family, my community and my intense love for the dynamic geography of the dry hills and rugged coast of the land around me.
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"Art enables us to lose ourselves and find ourselves at the same time." —Thomas Merton