I am a Bay Area-based artist, working primarily in painting and printmaking. My work has been strongly influenced by the Bay Area Figurative School, with its combination of figurative painting elements and abstract paint handling techniques. I have a gestural, expressionistic style, and am passionate about color. My earlier works focused on figures and narrative content, more recently I have been increasingly drawn to landscape-based abstraction.

Often when I paint I will use reference material, still life, landscape, drawings, or photographs. In these works photographs of nature, often featuring images of gardens and water, serve as inspiration for gestural works evoking my impressions and responses to the scene, and to the marks emerging on the canvas. Working on large canvases is comfortable for me. I enjoy painting with my whole arm, my entire body, rather than just hand or wrist.

Finding points of reference, the ripples in a pond, the roughness of bark, the simple geometry of a bench, I alternate between looking and making specific references to my source material, and a dialogue that emerges within the structure of the painting itself. How one shape, color, or line relates to another. This conversation continues until there seems to be a balance, a point where the painting is saying something. At times I intentionally leave these works very loose, retaining a lot of open areas, areas for the eye and mind to wander.

In addition to my painting practice, I have become a bit obsessed with printmaking! My recent monotype series are often inspired by nature, the flora and fauna which surround us, as well as my love of color. I have employed a variety of techniques to obtain my desired results, often using stencils of animals, flowers, or birds that I draw, then cut with an X-Acto knife or nail scissors, to use as a template. These produce a fascinating effect to be achieved as the ink below the stencil is revealed, and the stencils themselves build up interesting layers of color. I enjoy combining these with other, found materials. Sometimes I use leaves as a type of stencil, intrigued by the minute level of detail of veining that is revealed in the process. Departing somewhat from the natural world, more abstract compositions are formal explorations of the evocative potential of found objects. Printmaking is such an engrossing medium because of the element of surprise, every time I pull a print revealing the image is such an exciting moment, much like opening a present.