Artist Statement
Painting is how I express my devotion to the mystery of life. For me, the mystery dwells everywhere, in every thing, but is often veiled by the activity and concerns of everyday life.
When I paint I recreate colors, shapes and gestures – impressions that offer themselves up from deep within. These images somehow lift the veils, allowing a glimpse of the mysterious to shine through.
Every aspect of my process invites the unpredictable nature of creativity. By adding richly pigmented paint and then scraping and sanding, dozens of layers eventually evolve into a finished piece. I use acrylics, oil pastels, glazes, pumice, metal leaf, and resins to build a highly textural, glowing and sensuous surface. My paintings are expressionistic, often featuring the human form emerging from abstract geometric shapes and symbols. They explore the numinous interplay between humans, animals, and the elements.
If paintings are windows, mine peer into a world where the line between archetype and ordinary reality is blurred, where the ancient rubs shoulders with the present. Through these windows, stories come to life, stories that can only be told in the potent and wondrous language of art.
Artist Bio
If my paintings are windows, they open onto a world where archetype and ordinary reality blur at the edges — where the human figure emerges from abstraction, animals and birds move between the earthly and the divine, and beauty reveals itself as the deepest truth of things. This is a world discovered not through imagination alone, but through the living of a deep and wondrous life.
Growing up in Los Angeles, a girl inspired, seeking, and already deeply spiritual, the afternoons spent in art museums felt like pilgrimages. Returning home, I would pass hours in the quiet of my room with paint and paper, struggling to recreate what those paintings had stirred. Painting, dancing, singing, writing poetry — the arts were not a hobby. They were the atmosphere I breathed.
At UC Santa Cruz, the art department’s A-frame painting studio in the redwoods became my second home. After the other students had departed and the fog had rolled in, the night would pass in total immersion in the creative process. It was clear then that my life’s work — whatever form it might take — would find its strength and inspiration there. Graduating with honors in 1975 with a degree in Arts, Crafts, and their History, I continued to Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where a master’s degree in Expressive Arts Therapies followed in 1978.
Work as an Art Therapist gave way to a deeper calling — a journey of spirit that has never really ended. Living in India, in an innovative meditation community, opened a years-long chapter of leading workshops at the intersection of creativity and inner life — traveling to Germany, Switzerland, England, Holland, Japan, and cities across the United States. During this period, I co-founded an artistic hand-crafted furniture business, and an organization offering contemplative teachings worldwide, serving as its Executive Director. Through all of it, the creative impulse remained the thread.
Then, in 1997, everything changed.
A head-on car collision left me with a head injury that temporarily — but severely — impaired the functioning of my rational mind. No longer able to rely on logic and linear thinking, the world arrived directly, without a filter. Once the initial confusion began to clear, what remained was staggering: beauty was everywhere. In the light pouring through a window, in the curve of a leaf, in a stranger’s face. It was absolute, overwhelming, and completely transforming.
After twenty years away from the canvas, painting began again. It has not stopped since.
My work is expressionistic, painted primarily in acrylics — exploring shape, depth, movement, and atmosphere. The human figure often emerges from abstract forms, not fully arrived but fully present, the way a person is present in a dream. Rich, layered color carries the stories, which rise from the world of archetype and symbol, older than language. Described often as “worlds within worlds,” these paintings are concerned with the numinous connections between people, animals and birds, earth, nature, and the divine.
My home and studio are in Sonoma County, California, where the painting continues. This work has been shown in publications, galleries and juried national exhibitions across the country and lives in private collections throughout the United States. I am a former member of the National Association of Women Artists, New York.
Selected Exhibitions
2025 Members Exhibition – Sebastopol Center for the Arts, Sebastopol, California
2014 Members Exhibition – National Association of Women Artists, NAWA Gallery, New York, New York
2013 Holiday Show, Waxlander Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico
2013 Members Exhibition – National Association of Women Artists, NAWA Gallery, New York, New York
2008 “Coming Full Circle”, The Louvre, Grass Valley, CA
2007 The California Cooperative Art Project, State Capitol, Sacramento CA,
2005 Executive Realty, Nevada City, CA
2005 39th Annual National Exhibition, Placerville, CA
2004 “Where the Wild Thigs Are” Morthern Mones, Grass Valley, CA
2004 Center for the Arts, Nevada County, Open Studios, CA
2004 38th Annual National Exhibition, Placerville, CA
2003 Open Studios, Boulder, CO
2003 Boulder Public Library, Open Studios Exhibit
2002 The Creative Force Collaborative, Boulder, CO
2002 Kanegis Gallery, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO
2002 11th National Art Exhibition of Northern Colorado, Fort Collins, CO
2002 Boulder Art Association 11th Annual National Juried Exhibition, Boulder, CO
2002 “Art of Boulder”, 2002, Pueblo Bank & Trust, Boulder, CO
2001 “Art Triumphs Over Domestic Violence,” Boulder, CO
2001 Open Studios, Boulder, CO
2001 Boulder Public Library, Open Studios Exhibit
2001 Boulder Art Association 10th Annual National Juried Exhibition, Boulder, CO
2001 10th National Art Exhibition of Northern Colorado, Fort Collins, CO
2001 “Thresholds to be Crossed” – On Broadway, Boulder CO
2000 Open Studios, Boulder, CO
2000 Boulder Public Library, Open Studios Exhibit
2000 Brain Trust Foundation Art Exhibit, Boulder, CO
1999 Investors Independent Trust, Boulder, CO
1999 Open Studios, Boulder, CO
1999 Boulder Public Library, Open Studios Exhibit
1999 Boulder County AIDS Project Exhibit
1975 University of California, Santa Cruz
Awards
2004 1st Place: Northern Mines Art Show – figurative – Grass Valley, CA
2004 1st Place: Northern Mines Art Show – wildlife – Grass Valley, CA
2004 Hon. Mention: 38th Annual National Mother Load Exhibition, Placerville, CA
2002 Windsor Newton Award: 11th National Art Exhibition of N. Colorado, Fort Collins, CO
2001 Finalist: The Artist’s Magazine National Art Competition
2001 Hon. Mention: 10th National Art Exhibition of Northern Colorado, Fort Collins, CO
Memberships
National Oil and Acrylic Painters’ Society
Society of Layerists in Multi-Media
National Acrylic Painters Association USA
National Association of Women Artists
Teaching and Lecturing
2003 Judge: City of Boulder Art Festival, Boulder, CO
1999- Present Teacher: private workshops and lectures throughout the United States
1999-2000 Teacher: Naropa University, School for Continuing Education, Boulder, CO
1976-1991 Artist, Art therapist A.T.R., Psychotherapist and Educator; creativity training and workshops, innovative therapist training throughout the U.S., and in Canada, Germany, England, Switzerland, Japan and India
