The strokes of my paintings are composed of the colors, stories, emotions and life visible around me.
As a young girl growing up in Ohio, I would paint, draw, play around on the guitar and sing. I was, and am, a self-taught artist (seems to me, my style is impressionistic AND expressionistic — but what do I know?). Not everyone understood what I was doing, including me — I was kicked out of my high school art class. And music class.
But I never stopped speaking to art and art never stopped speaking to me. Art only asked that I was myself. Filling canvasses with color was equal parts self-care and self-discovery. This was how I made sense of me. Eventually, this was how I made sense to other people. At 21, I did an art show at DreamWorks on Music Row in Nashville. From there, opportunities seemed to present themselves through random serendipitous events. I sold commissioned pieces, I did shows with the art collective Untitled Nashville, and cafes, restaurants, and bookstores began displaying my work. I recorded an album where each track had a companion painting. And the little girl who got kicked out of art class even became an art teacher for a spell…
Somehow, someway, I fell into the world of live painting. Today, I paint fundraisers, corporate events, weddings, galas, and create a space where performance art and fine art coexist. I was the featured artist at the “Revealed” photographic exhibition in Chicago featuring the modern masters of painting from Picasso to Chagall. I have been privileged to travel the world, painting everywhere from New York to Los Angeles, Victoria Island in British Columbia to South Beach, and even as far as Sydney Harbor in Australia.
I never expected do art for a living, but here I am, inside of a very real dream. I want my paintings to speak. I want them to draw people in. The world is full of much beauty, and everyday I discover something new I want to share.