Studio 17

PAINTING & CERAMICS

About Me:

My creativity springs from a sense of fascination with people and a delight in life. As I have done since childhood, I automatically notice faces as I imagine a fashion designer instinctively observes fabrics and cut as she goes about her daily life.

Faces and color dominate both my oil painting and clay sculpture. In oils, I wield a palette of vivid colors to embody the spirit of the person and reveal her (or his) frame of mind in that exact moment. My work in clay, though still involving the human form, is darkly whimsical like sweet and sour candy.

During the creative processes of painting and sculpture, a hidden awareness of myself and the atmosphere of my life emerges. When each symbolic piece of art is finished, I am ready for it to leave home and go out into the world.

Profile:

Since the age of 4 or 5, I have been fascinated with how people look. While my family was watching television for entertainment or news, I was sitting on the floor studying the faces that flashed across the screen. Soon I began to draw them, teaching myself as I went along. For years I used pencil and pastels but what I really wanted to do was paint. In my 20s, after finishing a commercial art degree, I bought my first book on painting and dove in. In 2008, I took the opportunity to study with Victor Wang at Fontbonne College in Saint Louis, who is a kindred spirit in his color palette and subject matter.

I grew up in a Wisconsin town so small that we had to count cats and dogs to reach a population of 200. Love and marriage brought me to St Peters, MO, just west of St. Louis.