About the Artist
“I paint because I just don't know how not to.”
Art has been part of my life as far back as I can remember — ceramics classes as a kid, hours lost in coloring books and paint-by-numbers, and a high school drawing of a marina sailboat that made me think for the first time: maybe I could actually be an artist. Life took me down other roads first. I grew up in Slidell, Louisiana, earned a Ph.D. in psychology from Texas A&M, and built a career in educational and psychological testing that I've loved for thirty years. But the pull to create never went away. It just waited.
Today I paint from two studios — one in Austin, Texas, and one in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The Austin studio is a guest bedroom with a big window and good light, where I burn incense to get started and routinely forget to drink my coffee. Most mornings I look up and two hours have gone by. That's how I know it's working. My Santa Fe basement studio is starting to get a good workout. I love painting those beautiful high desert landscapes!
My subjects are birds and landscapes — the wild, beautiful, fragile things. The birds started showing up as small highlights in my landscape paintings before I even noticed. Once I did, I couldn't stop. I've kept birds as pets and known them up close, and that intimacy comes through, I think. I paint them not as specimens but as presences — creatures with color and mood and a way of holding themselves that deserves to be looked at.
People tell me my paintings make them happy. That's the whole point. I want someone to walk past one of my pieces every single day and feel something good. I can't imagine a higher compliment.
I'm a member of the American Bird Conservancy and the Audubon Society, and I contribute to conservation efforts regularly — because if we lose the wild places, we lose the things worth painting. We only get one planet.
Artist Memberships
American Women Artists
Oil Painters of America
American Impressionist Society
Plein Air Painters of New Mexico
Wimberley Valley Art League