My grandmother took me, as a young girl, to see the paintings in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, where I fell in love with Renoir’s “Girl with the Watering Can.”  From then on I was hooked on painting.  In high school I studied art history and visited many of the other galleries located in Washington.  I majored in fine arts at Ohio Wesleyan University, Delaware, Ohio, and by the time I graduated I had completed a thesis and arranged my own show, for which I received Departmental Honors.  In 1982 I graduated with a Master of Fine Arts degree from American University, Washington, D.C. where I studied oil painting in the spirit of the “old masters” of Europe.  The watercolors that ensued from this period are derivative of the traditional approach of painting from life, but evoke an expressionist, non-traditional approach to watercolor employing gesture and color to express content.What I strive to achieve is a sincere search for the spirit of a subject, where the intangible meets the human hand, at which time art is born.

I returned to artwork after a long hiatus into music, including guitar and voice, as well as teaching piano.  I live in Burlington, West Virginia, with my husband, Rick, who is also a talented woodworker