About

Artist’s Biography:

Welcome to my website and thank you for stopping by! As you can tell, I paint in a representational style nearly always incorporating people, especially children, into my narrative work and using composition and color (or sometimes bold black and white) to invite you to participate in the story. My paintings emphasize child nurturing relationships, religious themes and often combine the storytelling with social justice issues from human trafficking to homelessness, diversity and the environment  I usually work in oils due the brilliance of the hues and the textural qualities of the paint. Often I use a verdaccio underpainting with multi layered glazing because it adds a richness of color that I find aesthetically pleasing, especially in portraits. 

 

Below my introductory illustration on my Home page, you can find trailers for several of the 5 children's picture books I've illustrated, 4 for Guardian Angel Publishing, Inc. and one for United Way. As a part of my artistic journey, I have also had the joy of teaching art to teens for 17 years in public schools in Ohio and Florida.

 As well as steadily doing a variety of commissioned work, I have also done a series of 25 black and white paintings I call "Faces of Human Trafficking" to help raise awareness and educate about the scourge of sex trafficking in the United States of America. These 25 paintings have been exhibited in a wide range of public and private art centers and galleries as well as government and church settings in Central Florida where I reside. Wherever I speak on the topic of human trafficking, I bring some of the paintings with me to help my audiences make a powerful visual connection to the true stories told to me by survivors and the information I share. To respect the privacy and dignity of these survivors, the faces in the paintings are not theirs.   

 

   

 Artist’s Statement:

 

I believe in commitments: to God, to my beloved family, and to my work which is my affirmation of life and the power of love. Art is a spiritual link with my Creator. It is the lilting, haunting melody which leads me through my life both in times of sunshine and of shadow. Sometimes it dances joyously, bright and free. Sometimes, it is more subtle, submerged beneath life’s demands, but like an underground river of pure water that sustains and refreshes. Art can calm me and lift me. It can make urgent demands and wear me to a frazzle or gift me with bursts of energy I didn’t know were possible. It occupies so many of my waking thoughts. It is hope, my inspiration, a holy thing, a gift from God. It is my life’s blood as surely as that which flows through my veins, and when the end of my earthly days comes, I can say through my art work and my students left behind that I believe in the precious uniqueness and creative potential of each individual and in the sanctity of life.