Silver Lining Painting

There have always been two artistic sides to me, an acrylic painter and mixed media collage artist. I often spend days working and reworking representational pieces until they are just right. But my most common reaction to a finished representational piece is to throw myself into an abstract one next. I minored in art in undergraduate school. Upon moving to Washington, DC, in 1990, I was introduced to the Washington Color School and to the color field movement. A lover of color, I always try to incorporate it in new and different ways that are pleasing as well as eye-catching. My abstract endeavors rely on knowledge of colors and how they interrelate with one another. My representative work is loosely painted and draws on Impressionism and Fauvism. I also like to blur the boundaries between abstract and representation by creating mixed media collages with tissue, handwriting and found objects. Most recently, I embarked on a series of representatives paintings called "Forgotten:Remembered" that take the subject of old, unused barns from around the country and reimagining what they must have once been like in their heyday. I was born in Little Rock, Arkansas and raised in Oklahoma where I was fortunate enough to behold colorful sunsets unencumbered by buildings or mountains almost every evening. I have now found a way to connect both my love of representation with my admiration for the abstract. I believe people's lives can be enriched by introducing color, whether with a represenational piece or an abstract.