I was born in 1972 in Cold Spring, NY. I studied art at a number of institutions, including School of Visual Arts, NY, and San Francisco Art Institute, for graduate level studies.  After earning a Bachelor of Arts in History, and obtaining an art teaching credential, I taught high school art for nearly 20 years. I have lived and worked as a full time artist in Martinez, CA since 2021.

Mindfulness enriches my mental well-being and inspires my creative process. The practice of noticing what is happening in the body when an emotion is present, and staying with that feeling instead of ignoring or trying to alter it increases my capacity for intense internal responses. My most authentic and compelling work is made when I let energy flow without obstruction. 

In the studio, I build layers in an almost automatic fashion. I may scrape and scratch aggressively at a surface, then glaze and apply ink in swooping gestures as my mood softens. This produces a multilayered map of the shifts in my state of mind. I then make deliberate compositional decisions to resolve the piece, and clarify the visual narrative I want to share. Staying vulnerable in the work, I encourage viewers to take part in our shared human experience, simply by feeling.