Art to make you smile.
I make art to share emotional snippets of life, usually using trees, plants and animals to represent people. Please use my art to help bring to the surface your own memories of sweet and poignant emotional moments that have been kept tucked inside and might be enjoyed again. Through the use of colors, lines and movement, I hope that my little stories help you remember your own cherished life experiences.
I retired from teaching over 25,000 students Art for 23 years. I laughed and cried a lot. From my patio perch, I watched and painted my world.
Personal
I am a practicing artist with pieces in collections in 19 states and 13 foreign countries. My interest in art began as a very accident prone tomboy who had a cast or stitches for periods most every year. My mom and grandmothers kept me busy during this time learning different art forms. This led to winning an art scholarship to The John Herron Art Museum in Indianapolis, Indiana when I was in grade school. I learned to embroider, knit and sew by the time I was eight yrs. old so I developed a true passion for the fiber arts. This passion was enhanced by classes in weaving, batik, silk screening textiles and sculpture while attending Indiana University.
After moving from Indiana to Colorado and creating large fiber pieces, we started a family and I had to put away all of the pins, needles, nails and screw drivers that we had 3 babies crawling and toddling around. Desperate for another creative outlet, I began to work with watercolors and drawing. After we moved to Arizona in 1985, I began working with Tempera paint. Having a family and full time job only allowed me to work on pieces for short snippets of time. I stole ½ to 1 hour daily before leaving for my teaching job at a middle and high school. I painted all day on those occasional weekends while all the kids were away or busy. I hid out under my mandatory headphones and gleefully painted at every opportunity. Tempera allowed me to let things dry and rework them later or pick up where I left off whether it was 10 minutes or two days. I loved the richness of the colors I was able to achieve and found this to be much more appealing and forgiving than watercolors.
Children are grown now,I am retired from teaching and my husband works out of our home and is available to offer suggestions and his perspective. I now work primarily with acrylics since I can work for long periods of time expressing tidbits of life that made me smile, giggle, weep with sentiment and cry that sometimes come from the oddest of circumstances. Children, husband, family, pets, friends, students and nature are my inspiration. I enjoy sharing these senses of life with others and hope they inspire you to remember your own magical experiences.