Artist Statement

My focus in college and my early professional career has been commercial art and graphic design. When I began experimenting with pastel a few years ago, I mainly focused on technique as the medium was so foreign to me. I quickly grew to love the immediacy of pastel – no paint mixing, little cleanup. And I loved the fact that I could work for 30 minutes, walk away and come back (even days) later and pick up where I left off.

As I researched technique, I found several artists who greatly influenced me. Seeing their art excited me and gave me "the itch" to create my own art. Artists such as Mark Leach, Bill Suttles, Wolf Kahn, Robert Burridge and Susan Sarback have an incredible way of using light, color and simple form to portray strong emotion along with a sense of place. That’s the challenge for me in my art. It’s not difficult to produce a realistic "copy" of a subject. But to be able to paint a scene and have your audience feel exactly what you were feeling at the moment you experienced a certain place – for me, that’s art!

My ultimate goal is to create art that brings a little bit of joy in a troubled world. My joy comes when someone sees a piece and they fall in love with it, not because it’s something great I did, but because they have an emotional connection with it.