A little about myself...

I was born a creative personality and excelled in music, visual art and writing but it was the fierce and tender beauty of the natural world that captured me and drawing and painting were my medium of choice to express it. My middle school career counsellor tried to dissuade me from art, "Bad career choice." he said. So I had to decide between that bad choice and law which I developed a keen interest in. After winning a court case where I represented myself at the tender age of 16, the presiding judge sent a message with the prosecutor that I should seriously consider a career in law. After much research into both vocations and recognizing that I wanted to make oodles of money, I chose art. 

I started in the graphic arts/academic program in high school and then onto college for training in illustration and design. Two years later I graduated from Red River College and went to work in an in-house ad agency, then moved on to become the Art Director for Global TV Saskatoon, free-lanced for advertising agencies, and worked out of my own studio doing fine art commissioned portraits and paintings.
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I dealt with health issues in the 80's but by the 1990's I became consistently chronically ill and was forced to leave my corporate position and struggled to paint in studio. I regrouped and entered into university and embarked upon earning a BA and Social Work Degree. However, I was unable to complete this endeavor due to continuing health challenges and choosing to care for my mother who developed Alzheimer's disease. These experiences profoundly changed both myself and my art in dramatic ways, and, in retrospect, I am oddly grateful for them.

My foundation is in realism but I now work as an abstract expressionist painter. The pieces I produce are visually dynamic, utilizing lots of movement and colour, with the juxtaposition of light and dark that produces a variety of potent evocations. A theme I return to time and time again is that of the vastness of space whether that be looking upon the wide-open prairies of Canada where I grew up, or residing in the spaciousness of one's own mind. Expressionism gives me the ability to convey my message of ferocity or gentleness and the abstract component enables me to do so unfettered of clumsy or heavy-handed direction of the viewer. I want the individual to find or feel from the work, that which is relevant to them. Then the work is complete and has come full circle. 












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