Welcome!
I’m so glad you’re here.
Life can be noisy and demanding. I create art for people who want a little more peace in the spaces around them. Art that offers a place to let their shoulders drop and simply breathe.
My work begins with the feeling of nature rather than a particular place. Trees, mountains, and water appear again and again, shaped by memory, imagination, and a lifelong habit of paying attention.
I create the kinds of places I would like to step into myself. Quiet. Strong. A little mysterious.
Who I am
I’m an artist living and working in Northern Virginia. My work is held in private, corporate, and public collections, including the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Schar Cancer Institute, Lorton Library, and the U.S. Department of State.
I work from my studio at the Workhouse Arts Center in Lorton, Virginia.
A Lifelong Habit of Looking
I grew up in the mountains of southern West Virginia, surrounded by forests and a landscape I didn’t realize had settled so deeply into me until much later.
I’ve always been curious and always been a maker. I spent seventeen years as a graphic designer and more than twenty years as a docent at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. I danced ballet for decades. Travel and an early job in a Japanese woodblock print gallery opened my eyes to places, cultures, and ways of seeing beyond the world where I grew up.
All of those experiences taught me to pay attention.
And that we don’t always understand why something moves us.
Sometimes we simply feel it.
The Places That Stay With Me
My paintings don’t usually begin with photographs. Most come from my imagination.
I may be thinking about mountains I knew as a child, the quiet structure of trees, the movement of water, or places I’ve encountered while traveling. But once I begin working, memory and imagination take over.
I build the surface in layers, adding, scraping away, sanding, drawing, and allowing earlier marks to remain visible.
Perhaps that’s because I don’t believe our lives are meant to look untouched.
We are shaped by what we’ve experienced. Some things remain on the surface. Others are buried beneath years of living. All of it becomes part of who we are, and sometimes it appears unexpectedly in my art.
Why I Create
We can’t control much of what happens around us. The world is noisy. Our days are full. People we love change. We experience loss. We live with more than other people can see.
I can’t fix those things with a painting.
But I can create a place where, for a moment, nothing is required of you.
A place to lower your shoulders.
A place to breathe.
A place to feel a little steadier in the world.
That is why I create.