Biography

Art is an extension of my voice. Everything that I am, everything I do, is about creating beauty in the world. My early career as a fashion designer, my current work as a hairstylist, my lifelong passion for gardening, tango, and poetry are all simply expressions of one internal story.

It wasn't until 2006 that I first felt the call to experiment with color on paper. I wasn't sure how to begin, or which medium to explore. Pastels turned out to be my choice.

I think it was the gardening, which reconnects me with the rhythms and cycles of nature, that led me to paint. In nature's quiet places I become part of something much larger than myself; it's a form of unveiling, self-awakening, meditation, spiritual therapy.

Painting, like gardening, teaches me the art of surrender. Whether in the garden or at my easel, I can study and learn, conceive of complex designs, tend and nourish with diligence, and invest massive amounts of energy — but in the end, the beauty unfolds in its own way, and I am but its servant. Any illusion of control is easily stripped away, as when the gophers spoil a flower bed overnight, or when a painting in progress reveals, with sudden clarity, that something just isn't working.

Gardening, painting, life: only by yielding to what is, without fear or attachment to outcome, can I partake in this fragile beauty.

I don't assume to know where my art is going to lead me. I'm not doing it with an outcome in mind.

I paint because I have to. It's that simple.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

January 2010  Juried into the Biennale Grandeshow at the Hubbard Museum in Ruidoso, NM.
April 2010         Featured artist on a monthly mailer for Colonial National Bank.