I am the youngest of three, born and raised on the outskirts of the very gray and very green city of Vancouver, Washington. I began college intending to major in writing but changed my major to art after a few semesters of discouragingly dismal writing classes and especially inspiring art classes. Upon graduating in 1992, (Houghton College) I worked three (simultaneously) boring and mundane jobs in order

to pay off my school loans, met and married Brian (yes, about that quickly) lived in Indiana, Virginia, (followed Brian there. He was a musician. I turned down a full-time job as a graphic designer to follow my new musician boyfriend to Virginia. My parents were thrilled. Thriiiiiiilled.) and then Tennessee and California. I worked as a graphic designer until 2000, at which point I happily resigned from my full-time job to do the part-time job of being a mother. (That’s a joke.) Five months after our second son was born, we moved from the concrete surrounds of southern California to the blessedly wooded and mountainous surrounds of northern California. At this time we also started remodeling the house we had bought in northern California. Oh, and

I was also recovering from a life-threatening medical thingy at that point. We highly recommend making a long distance move with a toddler and a baby, remodeling your house while living in it with the toddler and the baby, and recovering from intense physical ailments all at the same time. Oh, and be sure to include a husband who, when not remodeling, is trying to run his professional music business out of the spare bedroom. It makes for awesome times. Awesome.

Having finished remodeling (ha ha ha...”finished”...ha ha ha!) and fully recovered from all things tragically life-threatening, I now enjoy painting as often as I possibly can. The greens of my home state, the intense, earthy colors of the midwest, (Kansas in the summertime at sunset is really a sight to behold!) the blues of the California coast and the endless hues of my present home in the Sierra foothills are all visual influences in my work.

My three muses are my husband, Brian, and our two sons, Zane and Nate.

Ginger, our bagle, (beagle-basset hound mix) can also be quite inspiring.