About

My story of how I became in an artist is a testament to my belief that God is in the details of our life. I had many corrective facial surgeries when I was young and well in to my early adulthood due to a birth defect. All the while I had a passion for drawing, painting, fashion design and make up. I became an expert in every aspect of makeup, like skin tones. With my skills, I would accentuate my positives and hide my scarring. While being a patient in many different hospitals and while keeping up with schoolwork, I would peruse Vogue magazine. I would paint and draw for hours and I even illustrated my own fashion line. Art class was always my favorite class!

As many do, I followed what I thought was a “safe” career path. I studied psychology in college. I felt I had to do this to give purpose to all I had been through. After getting my masters degree in counseling, I worked at psychiatric hospitals and medical facilities. I then worked in private practice as a marriage and family therapist in Richmond, Virginia. In 2007, after my daughter was born, I decided to be a stay at home mom. Then, when she went off to preschool, I revisited my love of makeup by becoming a freelance makeup artist. After working with many photographers who really didn’t share my vision, I met Jyoti Sackett. She is an internationally published fine art photographer and a mom! We are still great friends to this day. As a team, our work appeared in many magazines. Our work also appreared many times over in Vogue Italia’s, Photo Vogue. My childhood dream had come true! Then, when Jyoti and I took a brief hiatus, I picked up my brush and fell back in love with painting.

My art style has seen many evolutions since I started in 2015. I started out painting mixed media portraits of fashionable but quirky women. I found so much inspiration from fellow portrait artists and fashion designers. I love using many different materials in my work such as paper collage elements, pastels, charcoal, acrylic inks, acrylics, watercolor and many more,  One of my favorite things to do is to scratch into the wet paint and make marks with the end of my paintbrush.

Currently I am working on a new body of mixed media collage paintings.  These paintings are  bringing me so much happiness.  I found my subject matter by tracing my joy back to when I was three years old. My nickname was the "the fish" because I was always underwater. 

 I am dialing in on what I want to express through my paintings. I have re-discovered my love of water through daily indoor lap swimming. At first I wanted to paint how I felt in water and was going to take a more abstract path to do this. Exploring this deeper I desire to express the way I feel when I move through water, which is extremely light and fluid like a dancer.