Head #1, Light-Skinned Collage

After attending art school at California College of the Arts, I became interested in furthering my education as an artist by getting my masters degree in Creative Arts Therapy. I was fascinated with being able to help others gain insight into their subliminal lives through creating art. While making art is challenging and joyful work for me, expressing myself without words has also encouraged a deeper understanding of my inner life and assists me in being dedicated painter. In my paintings and mix media pieces I am most interested in portraying figures. These subjects are somewhat obscured, while revealing facets of what is hidden beneath the superficiality of appearance. My work always evinces elements of mystery and the surreal in human life. The figures are often of ambiguous race, sexuality, feeling, mood; I may catch a person in a moment of amusement, hunger, confusion, passion, or expansion but do not begin working with any literal concept or message. I explore the duality of innocence colliding with darkness, but my art reveals something beyond an overt or intended message. I seek to reveal the truth, the stories within the stories, lying in these images without deliberately putting it there, and often don’t realize what a painting is about until it materializes. An image is successful when I feel truly at home with it and the figure comes to life. In the studio I enter a state of allowing, accepting what emerges, giving myself complete freedom to expand in the space; applying and excavating the layers of materials. Lately I’ve been using my recycled drawings and paintings to create collages. These pieces, glued on to the canvas, add depth, vitality and sensuality to the work and give it a dynamic charge.