I cannot remember a time when art was not near the front of my consciousness.  My mother is a painter, and we always had art happening in our household.  In college I fulfilled the requirements for both studio and art history.  I then worked for 20 years as a museum educator and arts administrator, learning about world art and how it has played a part in human history.  I am committed to the notion that art is a form of communication that makes us human. Since the dawn of time, we have communicated the beauty and challenges of our environments in visual terms.

About 12 years ago I started working seriously on landscapes in oil.  I begin most of my paintings with brushy sketches.  I underpaint my surfaces with orange or purple to provide unexpected color combinations in my paintings, and to enrich the layers of color painted on top.  I often work in series, doing three or four pieces in succession exploring the same motif. I like using a lot of strong brushwork in my paintings, and in some cases the brushstrokes become a part of the subject matter for me.  I enjoy the tactile qualities of paint, and prefer working on very smooth surfaces, such as gessoed board. 

My approach to form is sculptural.  I see forms as volumetric shapes – as whole forms rather than as accumulations of details.  Although I constantly study the landscape around me, I prefer to work in the studio. I find that if I remain outside, reality starts to distract me from what is happening in the picture.  At a certain point, I have to let go of what I see in the landscape and focus on what I am creating.  My objective is not to recreate realism, but rather to represent an interpretation of reality that is particular to my own vision.