Les Vieux Jours

Once upon a time, I was a mixed media artist that specialized in surreal & whimsical collage, digital collage, and assemblage art. In 2018, misfortune took a swipe at me as the house I was living and creating in made me severely ill, stealing from me all my creations and supplies, and leaving me with the wholly unfair trade of chronic illness.
It also took from me the ability to create as I did previously, and being a person who'd been drawing as soon as they could hold a crayon, this was a gut punch. Creating is how I cope with life; it is necessary as breathing.
It took a lightning strike of inspiration to find my footing and confidence again, because I felt that I had lost a great chunk of myself and had to constantly fight to keep it.
While I had previously been and still am inspired by artists such as Nick Bantock, Frida Kahlo, Vincent Van Gogh, Renoir, and Magritte along with Neil Gaiman, Shakespeare, ancient Egyptian art, medieval art, Victorian engravings and alchemical emblems, my new inspiration took a more unexpected shape. I stumbled across Noel Fielding and his art, specifically his painting, deciding to try on his mode of creation for a bit as I really needed to find a new and more immediate way to express myself.
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I graduated from Columbus College of Art and Design with a BFA in Fashion Design and Visual Communications in 1998, and also graduated to being overly goth. And since that wasn't enough, I got my second BA in Costume Design At Columbia College Chicago in 2005 and then proceeded to rebel against my previous training by doing self taught collage.