BIO
Born in Windsor, Canada in 1965, my family moved to Los Angeles when I was 5 years old, and then a few years later to the Bay Area in California. In 1989 I moved to the Jackson area in the Sierra Nevada Mountain foothills. I also maintain a second studio in Cincinnati, Ohio.
I was a solitary, sensitive and shy child and teenager, preferring to be alone with my books, art, animals and music. I would draw and paint incessantly, and daydream about a world more gentle and beautiful. I always felt like an outsider, and that I didn't really fit in anywhere. Art became my refuge from the harsh realities, unjustness, and stresses of life that seemed to encroach faster than I could come to terms with.
During college in the mid-1980's, I had the good fortune to take an art class taught by the late Eileen Gilbert-Hill. She was very active in the Bay Area art scene, and she taught me to see that there were all kinds of ways to "make" art...painting wasn't just about copying what I saw in front of me. Real art, creative art, begins and ends with imagination. I learned the fundamental rudiments of drawing and painting, but when I reached a certain technical level, I was no longer content to work in the formulized style of representational painting. Anyone can copy...but a true artist has fire in the soul, a desire and passion to imagine and inject the work with his/her own memory, feelings, logic, and intelligence.
In addition to loving all things creative, I also have a penchant for vegan cooking, veterinary and human medicine, biology, reading, organic gardening, music, and being active outdoors. I am an advocate for animal welfare and I donate heavily to various animal rights organizations across the United States.
