Artist Statement

My grandmother saw to it that I started painting in oils on canvas as soon as I could hold a brush, ensuring a fourth generation of women artists in our family. I started pottery classes in high school, studying privately with Marilyn Hartness who was a graduate student at the time and is currently an Associate Professor of Ceramics at Wingate College. I studied Classics for two years at Hollins College and then attended East Carolina University with a major concentration in painting under my mentor, Dr Emil Farnham, PhD (who studied under Hans Hoffman in NYC and Provincetown) and Edward Reep. After getting married and having my son, I completed my BFA (cum laude) in Painting at the University of Florida, Gainesville under Hiram Williams. Since then I've worked as a studio artist with brief stints in commercial and fiber arts. I've also studied English and Belgian bobbin lacemaking for many years and enjoy wheel-spinning art yarns. At the beginning of 2013, I decided to revisit my early interest in ceramics and began taking classes from Don Williams at the Morean Center for Clay.

My method of working is grounded in the early 20th century abstract expressionism, with special influences from John Marin, Charles Burchfield and Mark Tobey. I see my art as compositional and I often tie series to specific works of music, trying to make a visual representation of the rythms and melodies I hear. The underlying structure is based on Hans Hoffman's theory of "push-pull" composition and I am currently working to realize these ideas 3-dimensionally in clay.