I have been painting and drawing since childhood. Copying greeting cards onto my bedroom wall as a teenager, was a way to stay in my own space, after homework, chores, and a ride on my horse or motorcycle. My high school art teacher suggested that I attend an art institute, and I was accepted into the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, Maryland in 1987. Those were some tough years, as I searched for love in all the wrong places and continued down a path of destruction. Throughout those years, I used charcoal drawings to release feelings, and fulfill a grade in independent drawing courses. Those pieces carried dreary dreams and visions of themes of desperate dark doors, windows, bricks, walls and figures creating a diary of images. I received my B.F.A in 1991.
I returned to Missouri, and started driving for UPS in 1995. I started doing pet portraits, and commission pieces kept me busy. I have done hundreds of portraits, and started doing art shows on the road, until my son was born in the summer of 2002. The broken marriage, affected us both in a hard way. His artistic talents are available for him also, as he grows through his journey.
In many of my smaller paintings during the years of 2000-2010, I liked to simplify images with a “living line,” as I listen to songs on the radio, and write out lyrics of love. Drawing out my feelings with a marker, or a piece of charcoal, or dipping a paintbrush into ink or paint, helps release tension, and at times brings beauty to the brokenness. I might spend hours, days, or months layering bright colors of paint, pushing and pulling shapes into abstract images of passion, peace, and pain. On some pieces, even years later, I add the final touch, with just a few more strokes of color and line.
Abstract paintings from 2010-2020, are made from a process that repeats, with a fast, loose line to create images about loving one another, uniting and healing. I encourage others to also paint their heart out, to spread love like wildfire. This world needs more love. Lighthouse love landscapes are visions I want to start painting.
A few of my paintings, are landscapes of whales, dolphins, and bird like images jumping into billowing clouds, with a song of hope making waves through the water. Some are triptychs about family, love and marriage, and can be turned all four ways to show contradicting perspectives, as in an ink drawing titled “Family Portrait” one way and when turned upside down, titled “Single Mom.”
I love animals, flowers and nature. I enjoy using dried flowers, seeds, and other natural objects to create one of a kind pieces on mat board and in vases. There is a magical feeling, in a dying flower, broken stem, or a milkweed pod, that bursts open with new life. The end is the beginning, and with each new bud springs life into hope that shines brightly, with each breath I take, as I continue to do my art.
