Windows Painting

For those who know me, where I am today and the fact that painting is now my full time vocation, know that it is the result of a long journey. Looking back, I can remember the first time I felt like an artist. I was thirteen, in Ms. Kay's art class in Darien, CT. I was using watercolors to create a fall landscape and something clicked. I felt a freedom of expression I'd never experienced before. It struck a chord in me. Little did I know, I would carry that feeling on my journey throughout my life. I keep that watercolor in my studio as a reminder of what brought me to where I am today. I've been blessed with wonderful opportunities in life, many of which involved travel and the ability to live in different countries and among varied cultures. Starting in high school and throughout college, I spent months in France, England, Holland, Ireland, Russia and Brazil studying, among other things, art. After college, I joined the US Peace Corps where for two years. I was stationed in a small village in Tunisia, North Africa. My experiences living there defined my artistic style. Art was woven back into my life once again and I finally felt a sense of happiness. Tunisia had awoken my creative juices once more, which enabled me to develop an artistic hunger for self- expression and discovery. I realize now how much art and architecture shaped my time abroad. I spent numerous hours drawing, painting and photographing my experiences as a way of documenting my feelings, surroundings and memories. After years in the financial world in New York, I was missing that creative outlet for self- expression. In 2001, I enrolled in the Masters of Architecture program at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY. I graduated in 2004 and moved to Los Angeles to work in the field of architecture and real estate development. Again, I found something was missing. I wasn't finding my niche. As a result, I started to paint after work, at night, and behind my garage, outdoors, in Los Angeles. I started using oils, a new medium for me. I also wanted to go BIG and create large canvasses full of bold colors, with varied strokes, heavy textures and materials. It was refreshing and highly addictive. It was what I'd been searching for. Now I understand that my career endeavors were all efforts to find a "mainstream" outlet for my creativity.