I attended Pratt Institute as a recipient of the “Raw Talent Scholarship.” After graduating, I was recruited by Ralph Lauren to illustrate Ralph Lauren’s fashion concepts in photo realistic color pencil drawings. When I left Ralph Lauren at the age of 25, I was as the youngest director in company history. 

After Ralph Lauren, I started a brand identity and package design company. I led a team that designed brand identities, packaging, and print communications for companies that include; Estée Lauder, Elizabeth Arden, Christian Dior, Fendi, Liz Claiborne, Coach, Cosmair, Revlon, Perry Ellis, Clarins, and Stuart Weitzman. My work took me all over the world. I’ve created brand identities and package design for companies and sports teams in South Korea, Australia, Monaco, Switzerland, China and Canada. I also designed athlete brand identities for Tiger Woods and former heavyweight champions Evander Holyfield and Jon Ruiz. 

In 2004 I relocated to San Francisco to become the creative director for a major online travel website. It didn’t take long for me to fall in love with the city. When I’m not working as a professional creative, I can be found working in my San Francisco Mission district art studio or in various city parks drawing pen and ink illustrations. 

As a fine artist, I am multi-disciplined and enjoy working in a variety of mediums. I tend to be representational in my work but can move from photo-realism to abstract comfortably. I enjoy creating pieces that use bold strong colors combined with high-detail. I like unusual subject matters and enjoy combining unlikely elements into my pieces. For instance, combining my pen and ink illustrations with antique maps. My fashion background continues to be a theme in my work, inspiring me to explore functional and wearable art, as well as illustrations to adorn and enhance walls. 

What better place to paint than San Francisco? It presents limitless images: from the crazy layers of urban, industrial edifices to the flamboyant Victorians.

I am an onlooker into other people’s worlds; an observer wondering: what is going on in there, who is in there and what are they doing? At the same time my paintings are a reflection of the sometimes frenzied, sometimes alienating separateness that is at times my inner state, thus I aim to convey moments in time both atmospheric and emotional. Primarily it is the ambiguity and mysteriousness of our urban landscape that draws me aesthetically to the scenes I paint. I want to peer and inquire.  Moreover I want to capture the contrast, the light, and the color.

When I begin to paint I am full of hope, inspiration and excitement with the prospect of creating my vision in a form that others can appreciate. But the process has many stages including despair as well as pleasure. It is often a struggle and always a challenge. But those moments offer the greatest potential for growth and problem solving. Until finally I feel a sense of ‘doneness’ or satisfaction with what I see.

My work is representational. Below the surface of this quotidian subject matter, my concerns are with light, color, composition and spatial dynamics as well as the imagery itself. Drawing especially from the figure, is a basis for all my painting regardless of subject matter.

My paintings reflect my interest the built environment, and the interplay between city life, nature and infrastructure. My work is greatly influenced by my career as a landscape architect, where I learned to appreciate the overlap of history, topography, cultures, and industry that occurs in an urban environment. Responding to certain sites that might otherwise be overlooked, whether industrial areas, old streetcars, or the urban street, I want to capture the appeal and life of these settings with the vibrancy of colors that is my foundation. My paintings are a reflection on the underlying beauty of the places we see, and often don't see, in our world.

My Sweets series may seem to be a departure from my urban landscapes, but in many ways, I feel it is just a continuation of my exploration of patterns, colors, and the cultural diversity in urban life. Not to mention, a good excuse to indulge my sweet tooth!

My art is about reinterpreting my urban experience. I am inspired by the city’s diversity, and the juxtaposition of engineered and natural forms. My artistic process is a combination of photography, printmaking, drawing and painting. I snap photos while walking in a neighborhood, then overlay the images in search of visual connections. Through a series of hand-made marks and color choices, I transform the objective photographic images into a more personal sense of place.

I began painting in 1996. My background is in fashion and costume design, theatre, dance and interior design. I have taken extension classes in painting at the San Francisco Art Institue and City College of San Francisco, but I am primarily self-taught. Most of my work has been imaginary landscapes. These are informed by my childhood in Michigan, travels in the West, summers in Maine and more than thirty years living in Northern California. Since each piece is an archetype and not a specific place the viewer is able to invest it with their own memories. I am also influenced by my materials, texture, found objects and images. I have painted on found and abandoned books and done a series of portraits based on found photographs. I love exploring the emotional resonance of color, or lack thereof.

My world is filled with shapes and colors. I am consumed with the beauty in my path. Exaggerated trees and whimsical shadows surround me dividing the world into pieces. I take all of the pieces and fit them together to make a painting that twists nature and known Icons into unconventional and amusing moments.

Rolling hills, expansive valleys, and majestic bodies of water become visual imprints on my mind. The patterns and sensations begin to cover the canvas with heavy brushwork and generous applications of paint, forming majestic oaks amidst rollercoaster vineyards. Violet mountains become the backdrop for disorganized valleys and cool marshes. The Sky erupts with cumulous clouds of umber and pink, and others fade across a shimmering ocean with purple horizons.

 My intention is to make dynamic imitations, a déjà vu for the mind that will encourage viewers to examine their surroundings with a fresh perspective. I want to present nature and structure with a delightful whimsy that reminds the public to turn their head and look again next time they pass a familiar place that has lost its allure.