I hadn't touched paint since childhood when, at thirty-five, I started pushing color around with my fingers and a pig in rain boots looked back at me. Five seconds in, it was clear: I was a painter. I still carry that moment with me — proof that you can't know everything about yourself in advance, and that a new version of who you are can arrive out of nowhere, mid-action. 

I found my way in through Iris Scott, a fine-art finger-painter whose words convinced me that painting is a skill you build, not a gift you're issued. That was permission enough to start, and to keep going.

I'm fascinated by the natural world, and drawn most to what's rascally, whimsical, off-beat, visually weird, or storybookish. I grew up on the East Coast, spending summers in trees or wandering the Great Smoky Mountains. Van Gogh and Edward Said Tingatinga are among my teachers, along with most artists who ever painted well. Give me a good museum and a quiet headspace, decadent garb with sparkling jewels rendered in strokes, a landscape that invites, a muse to understand, or an artist's grandmother — I will drink them up. Perhaps I should have known earlier, lying on the floor of my father's study, paging through his art books.
I am represented by Kyo Gallery in Alexandria, VA.