As a child, student, young wife and mother, I focused on the needs of others and doing what was expected of me. I have no rebellious streak but I do have artistic talent and a deep need to express myself with it. Over the years this need had been ignored while others had been fulfilled. I have raised two children mostly single-handedly while my husband pursued his calling in medicine. Many of the choices and promises that I made as a young woman proved to be extremely difficult to honor. The unexpected consequences of commitments and choices can be easy or difficult to handle. The unknown elements are always the most challenging to understand and resolve. Just as the kids were on their own and I began to think about creating some art, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. The treatment for this included surgery, chemotherapy and radiation for the next year. It was a difficult, scary time.
The second of four children, the oldest daughter of a doctor father and a painter mother in Ann Arbor, Michigan, I was a child of the fifties. I loved rock ‘n roll and football games. I went to college in my hometown, majored in art, and received a BFA in Painting. I married right out of college, had two children, supported my husband and his education. We ended up in Iowa City, IA where we have lived ever since and I earned my MA and MFA in Painting from the University of Iowa.
It has taken me a lifetime to gather my wits, time, and experience, put them together and finally express myself through my artwork.
When I retired as graphic designer for the public library I began to seriously pursue my dream of a career as an artist. As an undergraduate and graduate student in painting I had been trained in traditional methods and my early work had been oil on canvas. After working as a digital graphic designer at the library, I developed methods for combining and layering digital images in my computer with the eye and sensitivity of an oil painter.
Art is the language I use to try to understand and share my journey; past, present and future.
The foundation of the work is built on the familiar: people, places or things. They represent the known. Over, around and through this foundation I add other images or fragments of images. When combined they create something different: a new perspective. The comfort of the familiar combined with the confusion of the unfamiliar is an expression of my experience in the world.