What is it...

that encourages a person who feels, thinks, and sees, to take up a pen or pencil, draw some shapes, only then to find a responsive chord vibrating back from the paper?  As a child, I had a book called the Make It Book.  It was filled with creative ways to turn sticks, stones, paper and glue into cities, gardens or animals.  It powerfully nourished those first flushes of creativity in my life.  Luckily, time and circumstances have provided other enriching influences.

As true Americans, my family moved around a lot when I was young.  Born in Portland, Oregon, in 1955, we moved to Delaware, then Texas, and finally Ohio. College educated on the East Coast, I received my Bachelor of Arts, Degree in Studio Art, in 1977 from Connecticut College, New London, Connecticut.  Ten years in California only deepened my love for open, sensuous landscape.  For the last sixteen years, my husband and I have been enjoying the ambience and architecture of Northern Europe.

A lifelong interest in technique has fuelled many experiments: the sensuousness of a chalk surface, ready for the first dabs of egg mediumed paint, searching for luminosity in the techniques of the Old Masters, India ink, slaked lime, melted beeswax mixed with resin and pigment.  Finally, technique without inspiration is lifeless.  Inspiration without technique is an unschooled child.  If we are lucky, a little bit of both can come to us each day.

The poetry of light...
summer 2003 watercolors of the Belgian landscape.

The beauty of form...
Detailed and sensitive drawings from Greek sculpture.  The importance of good composition.

The craft of technique...
fresco, fresco secco, egg tempera, oil, mixed technique, and encaustic.