I’m a Charlottesville, VA-based artist who has lived in New York, Seattle, Italy and other places in the US and abroad. My work is a process of discovery shaped by the properties of materials and changing perceptions of space, color and scale that evolve in unpredictable ways. I’m currently focused on oil paintings and ink drawings using inks I make from walnut hulls.
I’m fascinated by plants, insects and ecosystems, with complex relationships that are often beneath or beyond our perception. I think my fascination with microcosms and their hidden buzz of life comes out in my work one way or another. It’s also a passion of mine to directly create and support wildlife habitat in whatever way I can, which you can read more about here.
Since I was a child I wanted to be an artist, a naturalist or both. In high school I started doing figure drawing at a community art center and I loved that, especially the gestures – movement, structured energy and negative space. I kept drawing and painting from life and imagination when I went to college at Antioch and Evergreen Colleges, then moved to Seattle where I worked as an artist’s model and studied printmaking and sculpture at Pratt Fine Arts Center. I was awarded a scholarship at the International School of Art in Umbria, Italy where I studied for two summers with Nicolas Carone, Bruce Gagnier and others. The teaching there was very expansive, ranging from the classical to pure abstraction, with drawing sessions grounded in analysis of the human figure in space. That experience and the art and landscape of Italy were important to my development as an artist.
I completed my undergraduate degree at Ohio University (BFA Art History) and then earned my Painting MFA at Syracuse University where I taught painting and drawing courses at the New York and Florence, Italy campuses. I also taught drawing, watercolor and paint-making courses for adults at the The Art Store School and the North Syracuse Art Guild in Syracuse. After completing my MFA I taught art to high school students in Florence, Italy for the American Studies Abroad (ASA) program.
I’ve shown my work in New York City (Sears-Peyton and Abrazo Interno Gallery); New Orleans (The One Series at The Art Salon); Syracuse, NY (Lowe Galleries, Gallery 220, Spark, Coyne, Schaffer and Edgewood Galleries); Harrisonburg, VA (Spitzer Art Center) and in Italy (ISA Gallery and Galleria del Palazzo in Montecastello di Vibio, Umbria and Società Tarquiniense d’Arte e Storia in Tarquinia, Lazio).