Bernese Mountain Dog in Mountain Land Painting

I was born and raised in Florida, but also spent parts of my youth in Texas, California, Tennessee, and Indiana. I benefited from the influence of a creative mother who enrolled me in art lessons at an early age. As a fourth grader, I attended a drawing camp at the Ringling School of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida where I learned how to draw with professional materials and received instruction from university art students. During my high school years, I spent countless hours perusing the galleries of the Ringling Museum of Art. I painted throughout college, though I was not formally part of any art classes (besides those in art history). I was also developing a music and performance-based practice at that time. I hoped to combine these interests in my work in the MFA-IA program at Goddard College. My most successful project there, Pontifex Marshmallow Bunny, was a performance and installation based on an invented, rabbit-based religion. After two years of study, I decided to take a job at a television station and did not complete my degree. I taught myself graphic design during the years immediately following my graduate school experience. This led to many opportunities to develop my creative skills as a commercial artist and designer. During the past few years, I pursued a teaching certification and found work as an elementary and middle school teacher. After recently finding myself without a classroom, I am embracing being able to once again, fully focus on my art. I am trying to piece together a living through part-time jobs, freelance work, and sales of my fine art and handmade decorative items. Though I have participated in some exhibitions, I have marketed and sold most of my art on my own as part of an entrepreneurial business. My paintings and other pieces are in collections around the United States. My recent work includes a series of dog portraits that combine painterly realism with abstraction and a series of mostly abstract landscape paintings of invented California places. The use of form and color by Frankenthaler, Klee, and Matisse inspire the energetic interplay of hue and pattern in my art. I am also strongly influenced by the colors, forms, and textures of contemporary fashion. In my current creative work, I try to express my values which are grounded in living an active, conscientious life, appreciating beautiful things, and having a strong relationship with nature and all living creatures.