Welcome!

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A little more about my background, and how it has shaped me as an artist:

I spent much of my childhood growing up in Tanzania, East Africa. This experience fostered in me a deep love of the natural world. Because of this, my art seeks to celebrate and honor the Earth's wild places and creatures.

After college I got married and spent the next 16 years teaching elementary school in the public school system. When our daughter was born, we decided I would stay home with her until she was in school. For several years up to this point I'd been into paper crafting, and I had made thousands of hand stamped greeting cards. It was a very fulfilling hobby, but I was getting tired of being limited to using the images available on the stamps. I wanted to create my own images and have the flexibility to make them whatever size I wanted. Also I had fallen in love with the transparency and blendability of dye inks, so I began painting with them a little as though they were watercolors.
 
Finally, in November of 2017, something prompted me to try an online watercolor class by artist Kateri Ewing. That class launched me into the world of color theory, the split primary palette, mixing my own colors to create harmony in a painting, and the gradual building up of transparent layers. From that moment on, I was hooked, and have never looked back. Watercolor is without a doubt the most inspiring, challenging, and satisfying medium I have ever worked with.
 
I also love the symbolism inherent in watercolor. Because of the way the pigments interact with water, it sometimes seems to have a mind of its own. The artist must accept a bit of unpredictability as a thing of beauty, and be willing to go with the flow, adjusting expectations as the painting evolves. Because of its transparent nature, all layers can be seen under the following layers. So for white/light areas, we must preserve the white of the paper or the light areas by reserving them, planning ahead to not paint them, or painting around them. We essentially paint the darks in order to reveal the lights.

I would love to help you on your own creative watercolor journey! Please reach out if you have any questions, and thanks for visiting!