At a very young age, I began painting. I had turned my bedroom into an artist studio painting in oils. The studio ultimately became a critical part of my life’s work—I have gone to great lengths to create environments that both inspire creativity, as well as, present an in-depth experience for my collectors to submerge themselves in my art. And, through an implied narrative or the art of storytelling, I explore the psychological and human threads common to us all and reflected through the focused lens of a place, a time or a human experience or expression.
My work reveals both conscious and unconscious thoughts in response to current or past events that have impacted my life on a personal level, as I interpret the greater impact to the overall social community and popular culture.
In my 20s, I went to India a number of times where I worked with cottage industry producers in textiles and textile embellishment. I designed many things while there and brought them back to the US to sell. This led me into developing a hand-painted textile line in imported Indian silks, distributed nationally through designer showrooms. I also designed furniture, retail stores and merchandising strategies for large companies. All of this work in the applied arts developed skills in working on a large scale, gaining critical confidence in my creativity while exposing me to many different cultures and manufacturing processes. I opened my first major studio in San Francisco after this in an old warehouse where textiles were painted.
By 1995, I had begun a professional career in the fine arts producing mixed media work sold through galleries across the US to many important collectors. I was thrilled that my work was respected and sought out. For me, my work had always been unique, as I was not a landscape artist or traditional in any sense. However, I loved focusing on the figure. Because I was working in multiple forms of media, I was forced to create in large spaces, separating the messy wet painting and casting from the dusty construction, and both from the photo and technical studios. I also always felt it was important to have a clean area to present work. To accommodate this, my studios ranged in size from 2,500 to 4,000 square feet.
As I surveyed the beauty of the Wood River Valley in 2016 during the process of searching for a new home and location to build a studio, the contact with nature I experienced was overwhelming. I was discovering the absolute beauty and majesty of the mountains that surrounded this protected valley. This extraordinary environment included moose that showed up regularly, herds of elk roaming the streets and lowland snow-covered fields in search of food.
It was an awakening to nature, as despite over forty years of coming to Sun Valley, I had not fully absorbed or been exposed to this degree. At the same time on a national level, native Indians fought for their sacred water rights on Indian reservations threatened to be polluted by oil pipelines. Politicians were questioning the scientific evidence of climate change and its increasing impact on our planet and wanting to do away with environmental protections. Companies were mass-producing food with no nutritional value, loaded with pesticides that destroyed the earth and were also killing off massive bee populations critical to the pollination of new crops. Never before had I come so face-to-face with the burden and imperative demand to care for our environment; having compassion for people, wildlife and nature who were struggling against the imposed dangers, whether from climate change or human misuse or abuse of the earth.
I was immensely taken by the beauty and the drama of struggle to live in and preserve such beauty and our obvious dependency on the earth. And not surprisingly, this journey and awakening have impacted my art. I was known for narrative figurative works, which at the time incorporated horses, birds and rabbits from a poetic point of view, but now, I was facing a soulsearching crisis of expression. Unlike the urban life I was raised in and lived in most of my life, I was now truly exposed to an awareness of the environment, its beauty and its threats. This seeped into my consciousness so profoundly that I was compelled to allow my new work to be informed both directly and indirectly by these issues. Today, themes of ecological logic and what is important in life (i.e. peace, nature, happiness, balance, wisdom, compassion and protection, etc.) are critical to my work. My newly constructed studio is proving to be a source of comfort and illumination as I create. To have a space that I designed, not just for a dramatic aesthetic with its expansive windows constantly reminding me of the tremendous beauty of nature, but to accommodate multiple media productions, is a dream that I am thoroughly grateful for.
At a very young age, I began painting. I had turned my bedroom into an artist studio painting in oils. The studio ultimately became a critical part of my life’s work—I have gone to great lengths to create environments that both inspire creativity, as well as, present an in-depth experience for my collectors to submerge themselves in my art. And, through an implied narrative or the art of storytelling, I explore the psychological and human threads common to us all and reflected through the focused lens of a place, a time or a human experience or expression.
My work reveals both conscious and unconscious thoughts in response to current or past events that have impacted my life on a personal level, as I interpret the greater impact to the overall social community and popular culture.
In my 20s, I went to India a number of times where I worked with cottage industry producers in textiles and textile embellishment. I designed many things while there and brought them back to the US to sell. This led me into developing a hand-painted textile line in imported Indian silks, distributed nationally through designer showrooms. I also designed furniture, retail stores and merchandising strategies for large companies. All of this work in the applied arts developed skills in working on a large scale, gaining critical confidence in my creativity while exposing me to many different cultures and manufacturing processes. I opened my first major studio in San Francisco after this in an old warehouse where textiles were painted.
By 1995, I had begun a professional career in the fine arts producing mixed media work sold through galleries across the US to many important collectors. I was thrilled that my work was respected and sought out. For me, my work had always been unique, as I was not a landscape artist or traditional in any sense. However, I loved focusing on the figure. Because I was working in multiple forms of media, I was forced to create in large spaces, separating the messy wet painting and casting from the dusty construction, and both from the photo and technical studios. I also always felt it was important to have a clean area to present work. To accommodate this, my studios ranged in size from 2,500 to 4,000 square feet.
As I surveyed the beauty of the Wood River Valley in 2016 during the process of searching for a new home and location to build a studio, the contact with nature I experienced was overwhelming. I was discovering the absolute beauty and majesty of the mountains that surrounded this protected valley. This extraordinary environment included moose that showed up regularly, herds of elk roaming the streets and lowland snow-covered fields in search of food.
It was an awakening to nature, as despite over forty years of coming to Sun Valley, I had not fully absorbed or been exposed to this degree. At the same time on a national level, native Indians fought for their sacred water rights on Indian reservations threatened to be polluted by oil pipelines. Politicians were questioning the scientific evidence of climate change and its increasing impact on our planet and wanting to do away with environmental protections. Companies were mass-producing food with no nutritional value, loaded with pesticides that destroyed the earth and were also killing off massive bee populations critical to the pollination of new crops. Never before had I come so face-to-face with the burden and imperative demand to care for our environment; having compassion for people, wildlife and nature who were struggling against the imposed dangers, whether from climate change or human misuse or abuse of the earth.
I was immensely taken by the beauty and the drama of struggle to live in and preserve such beauty and our obvious dependency on the earth. And not surprisingly, this journey and awakening have impacted my art. I was known for narrative figurative works, which at the time incorporated horses, birds and rabbits from a poetic point of view, but now, I was facing a soulsearching crisis of expression. Unlike the urban life I was raised in and lived in most of my life, I was now truly exposed to an awareness of the environment, its beauty and its threats. This seeped into my consciousness so profoundly that I was compelled to allow my new work to be informed both directly and indirectly by these issues. Today, themes of ecological logic and what is important in life (i.e. peace, nature, happiness, balance, wisdom, compassion and protection, etc.) are critical to my work. My newly constructed studio is proving to be a source of comfort and illumination as I create. To have a space that I designed, not just for a dramatic aesthetic with its expansive windows constantly reminding me of the tremendous beauty of nature, but to accommodate multiple media productions, is a dream that I am thoroughly grateful for.
