I have been making art for as long as I can remember. I had a newspaper route in middle school and used the money for painting lessons with an older artist who lived in the neighborhood. I also took lessons from a cowboy artist who offered small group lessons in his home, focussing on drawing the figure. Rather than using a live model he ripped out pages from his old Playboy magazines and passed them out to the students as source material. At this time it was just something “I did” without the awareness that I could make a living with my art.

I earned a BS in design science, and worked as a project manager in residential architectural firms. It was challenging and interesting and taught me a lot about creating environments, spacial relationships, form and color. During that time, I continued taking drawing and painting workshops at local community colleges and art studios.

Later, while taking time off to have children, I began looking at ways for art to become a professional goal.

My studio is in downtown Los Angeles, and I also work part time in Pioneertown, CA. My work often focusses on experiences growing up in the Arizona desert and the time I now spend in California deserts. Some of my oil paintings are abstracted figures in landscape and others are places or objects I encounter in my everyday travels.

I love the immersive experience of working on large scale canvasses and the physicality of making an almost human scale painting. The large surfaces also allow for more flowing and free mark making. It’s great getting lost in the space and hopefully creating the same experience for viewers. Color is as important to my work as the subject matter and I whole-heartedly embrace ” more is more” mantra about my use of color.

I have always been fascinated by wild, unkempt nature, neglected places and fringe societies that exist in harsh, unforgiving environments such as the desert. These often off-the-grid places offer refuge to inhabitants and an opportunity to live outside of social norms. I imagine some prefer living without the constraints of an urban environment, forming communities with like-minded neighbors.

Interestingly urbanites are drawn to these places that for me, fit the descriptions and writings by Michel Foucault about “heterotopias”.  For visitors these wild spaces may fulfill fantasies of escapism and provide a place for revelry, spiritual encounters, and a way to reconnect with primal impulses.

My work shifts focus between the disparate groups and how they both express and live out their connection to the wilderness. I paint imagined manifestations and often use abstraction as a vehicle to express spaces that are sometimes stand-ins for psychological states of being.

Artists are told to be their “authentic selves”, I wish that early on in my career I really understood what that meant and the significance of using oneself as the primary resource. I didn’t fully appreciate how vital this is to developing artistic identity and a unique voice. Sometimes I looked to other artists and their stories for inspiration, content and painting style. During graduate school I was trying to absorb everything I saw, everything I read, and constantly researched art and artists online. It was great being exposed to so much but it became overwhelming and confusing at times. Of course it’s important to attend shows, to see new work, to socialize at openings, and to keep abreast of what is going on the art world, but it’s also so important knowing how to balance that with time spent working without distraction.

I think I actually pivoted twice along the way. The most important departure was when I left my profession in architecture and after some time began working to build an art career. During the time I was learning to paint and how to be an artist I couldn’t figure out how to grow my practice. I applied to artist calls for group shows and I co-curated shows with other artists, but things weren’t progressing as I had envisioned. I knew that many successful artists are self-taught and never attended art school, but I was beginning to think that maybe I needed to approach things differently or to continue my education.