Artist Statement
I make art to tell a story. I take words and paint them into reality. I find joy in art, in turning the intangible into the visible, in using color and value to create form and life and pouring my soul into lifeless medium and animating it.
I make art also to make the world a more beautiful place. The world is full of dark, disappointing, disillusioning, and scary things, and for me the beautiful is a refuge. I want to fill people with happiness and wonder when they gaze at my work. I want them to smile. I want my work to be that refuge that they can escape to for a moment before they plunge back into the mundane.
My art has been informed by many sources, the greatest contributors being the Renaissance, Art Nouveau, and Impressionist movements, as well as select children’s book illustrators, such as, K. Y. Craft and Tasha Tudor.
I work mainly in watercolor, oil, and graphite. I use one medium or the other according to the feel that I want the finished work to have. Watercolors are more approachable, and oils are more formal, and graphite vacillates somewhere in between. I work mainly off of feeling, cultivating an awareness for the work and the soul that is taking root there.