About

I have been painting, drawing, doodling and making marks since as long as I can remember. From digging into the large box of dumped out crayons my mother provided to drawing with a rapiograph in my notebooks through a brooding adolescence. It’s  like breathing. A MUST. Inhale! As is true I think for many, the resistance to engaging with the essential and mysterious energy of creation can take many forms. I’ve had my fair and explainable share; from marrying young, building a home in Seattle, raising two daughters, going to massage school, working towards a masters degree in counseling and building two practices side by side, I did a lot of bargaining and finally have aged into a time when it is all possible. Allow! Exhale!

My paintings are  expressions of how I feel the world. My work  emerges out of  disorganized energy living inside me; a kind of visceral expression of or  response to the internal.  A showing of the dance that I feel inside. These paintings are not statements. They are not political. They are not intellectual.  They are however  reflections of my physical life. I spend time in both the city and the country. My days intersect with both concrete and the ever expanse of the forest. I am moved by the edge of urban sounds and tension that reflects disparity of needs and desires  as well as the pitch dark nights, sounds in the bushes, sunlight reflecting on distant Fir trees, golden yellow and oranges, traces of animals that passed by quietly.   These paintings  are what I have inside to share. They are chaperones to a vulnerable and tender part of myself. Perhaps a way to give language to my unconscious.  Or maybe not. Maybe the perpetual nervous energy that lives inside me  forces a line, a stroke, a combination of colors and shapes and connections between adversarial compositions. I am turned on by breaking visual rules and making new ones. It is so because here, see this? My impulse is to create tension between lines and spaces, color and texture. Isn’t that how the natural world of our minds and bodies and spirits exist?  I think so.

My process is spontaneous. I reach  for the colors I like, choosing paper or hard board, water color, acrylic or wax,  big brush, small  brush, I  start fast. I work on many pieces at once. I return to some after months or more and they stack up all over my space. I get attached to many; reject and snicker at some. The best I can do is take the time to listen to them. Perhaps they will speak to you as well.