I use different mediums for my portraits, landscapes and still lifes --oil paints because of their saturated and lush color, while watercolors are delicate, enhancing the drawing underneath, and printmaking expresses strong contrasts and textures on exquisite paper! Drawing, however, is the foundation of all my work--its immediacy and varied-line quality creates the structure for what is to come, whether it is a figure drawing, an oil painting or woodblock print.
I grew up watching my mother sing opera on stage in Los Angeles; life was dramatized under stage lights--make-up, gestures, costumes and stage sets. My father, who was an oil painter, had an early affect on my ideas of color, nature and beauty. The convergence of these artistic influences made it natural for me to become an artist.
Because we moved quite a bit, I found solace creating things in my room. It also made change normal which led me to travel and see great art and architecture while living in New York City, Italy and Spain. Afterwards, I earned a B.F.A. in Art, majoring in painting and drawing, from Boise State University. Because of a strong, traditional background in my art education, I have made a commitment to figurative images in much of my work and paint classical themes such as still life, portraits and landscape. However, I continue to explore contemporary ideas while I paint captivating people, collected objects and personal imagery influenced by my life experiences.
